03 January 2023: The Aaron Clift Experiment;

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FreeForm is please to open the new year with the exciting new release from The Aaron Clift Experiment.  This is an outstanding album for opening the new year, prog-style!

 Austin, Texas – One of the most eagerly awaited prog albums of 2023 will be released on January 6 by The Aaron Clift Experiment. Titled “The Age of Misinformation,” the band’s 4th album is a conceptual work about the destructive power of lies and the search for truth in the face of overwhelming odds.

 
Band founder, Aaron Clift, explains: "During the COVID lockdown of 2020 - 2021, my friends, colleagues, and country went through an incredibly challenging time, and I knew that I had to say something about it. ‘The Age of Misinformation’ is The Aaron Clift Experiment’s document of that era.”

 
In addition to its lyrical ambition and emotional resonance, the album marks a high point for the band’s creativity - featuring everything from explosive, hard rocking songs, to gorgeous ballads, to multi-layered vocal writing that would make Queen blush!  Two songs explore symphonic music with a guest string quartet, and the album’s lead single, “Bet on Zero,” is an epic big band jazz/blues fusion collaboration with 7-piece Austin horn ensemble, Big Wy’s Brass Band.

 
Aaron notes: “For ‘The Age of Misinformation,’ we wanted to do more of everything: record music that was more intricate, more melodic, and more diverse than anything we had done before. I’m really happy with how we pulled it off, but above all, I love how the album explores a concept that reflects the events of our current world. There are songs
all about frustration with the crazy state of politics, but there's also a renewed sense of optimism in other songs - knowing that there's always a light at the end of the cave."
 

Formed in 2012, The Aaron Clift Experiment is a multi-faceted band that blends influences from classic rock (Rush, Pink Floyd, King Crimson),modern rock (Porcupine Tree, Opeth), jazz, and classical - all anchored by a dedication to high-quality songwriting and musicianship. Progradar has described the group as "one of the most impressive progressive acts currently on the scene.

 
www.aaronclift.com
www.facebook.com/aaroncliftmusic
www.youtube.com/aaroncliftmusic
www.instagram.com/aaroncliftmusic

 

The Aaron Clift Experiment:
Aaron Clift: vocals, keyboards
Anthony Basini: guitar, backing vocals
Clif Warren: bass
Pablo Ranlett-López: drums, percussion

  FreeForm thanks Aaron Clift for provididng us with a copy of this release.

In the last few years, the band has carved out a significant worldwidefollowing. The Aaron Clift Experiment’s last album, 2018’s “If All Goes Wrong,” was a critically-acclaimed progressive rock achievement, landing on several year-end best album lists. In 2017, the band had a star-making performance at RosFest, one of the largest progressive rock festivals in the world, and followed it up with an impressive outing at 2018 at Chicago’s Progtoberfest, and in 2019 with a hometown concert that was recorded for the band’s second live EP, “Live at One-2-One Bar.”

 
Here's what the press has raved about The Aaron Clift Experiment:

 
“There’s much to admire about The Aaron Clift Experiment . . . They can convincingly range from pure power to more delicate inferences in the same song.” | Prog Magazine
“Prog smarts and pop appeal combined nicely . . . furnished sleek, urgently uptempo tunes, brainy-heading-toward-quirky lyrics, and a taut, controlled sound.” | Proglodytes
“The music of The Aaron Clift Experiment is melodic, hard, and spellbinding.” | Music from the Other Side of the Room

 

 

King Buffalo is the trio of vocalist/guitarist Sean McVay, bassist Dan Reynolds, and drummer Scott Donaldson. Since forming in 2013, the self-proclaimed "heavy psych" band has made its name via 4 EPs, 4 Full-lengths, and tours with the likes of Clutch, All Them Witches, Uncle Acid & the deadbeats, The Sword and Elder.

Rochester, New York-based trio King Buffalo will issue their fifth full-length, Regenerator, on Sept. 2, 2022, as a self-release in North America and through Stickman Records in Europe. Preorders will be available on June 10th via http://kingbuffalo.bigcartel.com.

Written and recorded by the band with mixing and engineering by guitarist/vocalist Sean McVay and mastering by Bernie Matthews, the seven-song outing is the third in King Buffalo’s stated ‘pandemic trilogy,’ following Two of 2021’s Best Albums in The Burden of Restlessness and Acheron.

Both of those albums – like 2018’s Longing to Be the Mountain, 2016’s debut, Orion, and the various EPs and other offerings they’ve made over the last eight years – made bold declarations about who King Buffalo are as a band, and Regenerator is no different. As McVay, bassist/synthesist Dan Reynolds and drummer Scott Donaldson continue to explore the outer reaches of modern psychedelic songcraft, melding progressive rhythms, drifting atmospheres and accompanying surges of electricity, the new collection only further establishes them as one of the brightest lights shining in underground rock today.

As the third of three, Regenerator seems inherently to tie together the two LPs most immediately before it, and as King Buffalo unfold the leadoff title-track across nine and half minutes, it becomes clear just how truly they have marked out their own sonic presence. The later melodic highlight “Mammoth” – with McVay’s most confident vocal yet – shimmers with hope that somehow doesn’t come across as desperate, and as “Hours” engages classic space rock and the closing “Firmament” summarizes the first, second and third series installments, the final chapter of this trilogy becomes the essential cornerstone of King Buffalo’s work to-date.

The band returned to live activity late last year, touring alongside Clutch and more recently a full North American spring tour with Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. By the time Regenerator arrives, they will have completed a UK and European headlining tour with festival appearances in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Belgium and Denmark.

Tags

rock desert rock doom heavy heavy psych heavy rock kraut krautrock psychedelic psychedelic rock stoner stoner metal stoner rock Rochester

 

"a farewell to arms" is the debut album by Michael Valentine West on the Reverse Alignment label. It is already known that mvw is a very talented musician, but in the long piece that gives the title to the album, the artist is capable of passing from initial intimate electro-acoustic music to expanses of pure sound plasma that bring to mind Ligeti's flocks of sound; and then to then pass through the energy of the percussion immersed in electronic gusts, finally returning to the calm of the dusty ambient music. A work of rare beauty.

Michael Valentine West is a composer/decomposer utilising lessons learnt from various musical disciplines such as minimal, ambient, glitch, hip hop, jazz and sound design. He has recorded, produced and remixed using aliases such as Twiggy And The K-Mesons, K-Meson 4, Suck Susan, Lower Third, Anal Teens and of course MVW. He has also scored music and contributed songs to soundtracks for several independent films.

credits

released December 28, 2022

Conceived and completed by Michael Valentine West between May 2022 and November 2022.
Images/artwork by Matt Hyde Photography
Mastered by Mikimo Sosumi
Post Production by Raffaele Pezzella

Published by Reverse Alignment (a label of Unexplained Sounds)
© 2022. All rights reserved

ambient dark dark ambient drone ambient industrial post-industrial Gothenburg

 

 

31 August 2021: The Survival of St. Joan (A Medieval Rock Opera) ; Stars of the Lid

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The Survival of St. Joan is a rock opera by Smoke Rise (Gary Ruffin, Hank Ruffin, Stan Ruffin, and Randy Bugg — music composed by Hank and Gary) from an original concept and libretto by Off-Broadway playwright and screenwriter James Lineberger. 

The plot of The Survival of St. Joan was possibly inspired by Operation Shepherdess: The Mystery of Joan of Arc by André Guérin and Jack Palmer White, a revisionist history alleging that Joan of Arc escaped execution and later married a nobleman named Robert des Armoises. An idea rejected by historians, the notion of a legendary Joan who lived on in secret has persisted.^[4] Certainly inspired by the Vietnam War,^{[citation needed]} the opera tells of the government of France and Pierre Cauchon, Archbishop of Beauvais, releasing Joan of Arc and allowing a double, also believed to be a witch, to burn in her place. She is sent to live with a mute farmer, who falls in love with her,^[1] as he elucidates in songs performed in soliloquy toward the audience. Realizing that there is no end in sight to the Hundred Years' War, the first act ends with Joan seeking to rejoin the army,^[1] despite the fact that she is no longer hearing her voices.

In Act II, Joan learns that she has lost the respect of the army, who attempt to rape her. (The libretto in the concept album has Joan raped about halfway through the act; this was changed when stagings went beyond a band performance to a full-fledged play.) She meets with some deserters who no longer understand the meaning of the war, and reject its former religious purposes, complaining that only their generals and the nobility can live above suffering. Alone and anonymous, Joan is eventually found by villagers who mistakenly decide she has put a hex on their cow, tie her to a tree and immolate her, thus ending her life almost as history would have it.^[1] Upon her death, Joan re-establishes contact with her three voices, St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. 

And Their Refinement of the Decline is the seventh and most recent studio album by Stars of the Lid, which was released by Kranky in April 2007. The album was Kranky's 100th release, and was issued as a double CD and as a triple vinyl LP set (featuring alternate artwork). And Their Refinement of the Decline features minimal, droning compositions of varied length created from treated guitar, horn, piano, and other classical instruments.

The track "Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottage" refers to Craven Cottage in London, the home stadium of English football club, Fulham F.C.. At the time of the album's release, their captain was ex-United States soccer international Brian McBride, who shares the same name as Brian McBride from Stars of the Lid. The track "Don't Bother They're Here" uses the melody of Stephen Sondheim's 1973 song "Send in the Clowns".

In December 2007, American webzine Somewhere Cold ranked And Their Refinement of the Decline No. 5 on their 2007 Somewhere Cold Awards Hall of Fame.^[9]

Stars of the Lid is an American ambient music duo consisting of Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie. The duo formed in Austin, Texas in 1993, and they list among their influences minimalist and electronic composers such as Arvo Pärt, Zbigniew Preisner, Gavin Bryars, and Henryk Górecki, as well as Talk Talk, post-rock artists Labradford, and ambient innovator Brian Eno. Their compositions are largely beatless soundscapes, composed of droning, effects-treated guitars along with piano, strings, and horns; volume swells and feedback fill the gap of rhythmic instruments, providing dynamic movement. Their sound has been described as "divine, classical drone without the tedious intrusion of drums or vocals."^[1]