The More You Live, The More You Love

In The Wake Of The Moon is already the ninth album of the Swedish neoprog band Galleon in their 25th years of existence. Strong compositions with beautiful community singing, melodic music in which Ulf Hedlung Pettersson and Sven Larsson have the oppertunity to give their solo performance on keyboards and guitar. Göran Fors got a nice and good sounding voice and his bassplaying I strong while drummer Göran Johnsson controles everything. You can call Galleon a surpisingly very strong band, with a brought reference of bands, but surely their own sound, which makes them unique. The quality of the eight compositions is of a high standard. After the bombastic starters Stages and Wallflower and the instrumental Child’s Play the band slow down in the titletrack, a beautiful ballad with a strong Tangerine Dream ambience. The first part of War At Home, called Woodland Creatures, opens as an instrumental with mainly Hammond organ, after which the ambient Aftermath follows. Over the Hills And 3 F...

After a succesfull reunion tour in 2009 which resulted in the 2CD / DVD Return To Eden, Ultravox returned to the stage in 2010 to bring the tour to the European mainland, where they played the Paradiso as well. For this second leg of the tour they changed the setlist. In Germany they decided to play the Kraftwerk alike Mr. X in the German version, called Herr X a b-side of the Vienna 12” single. Together with the three other additions to the setlist they have been released on the Moments From Eden EP. All three songs, New Europeans, White China and Love’s Great Adventure, additions the fans had wanted to see the band put into the setlist, are more rock orientated, machine-made driving electronic tunes with power-melodies and strong delivery. For fans this release completes the whole setlist of the Return To Eden Tour and keeps the fire burning since the announcement earlier this year about the band working on new material for a late 2011 release. The release comes as a limited exclusiv...

It has been awhile since my last entry. I was knocked out for three months by a virus and hardly visited the internet that time. But slowly I am recovering and after founding this treasure in my mailbox the other day, it was time to return to my blog. Last year Mirrors was the support act for Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark during their European leg of their History Of Modern tour. The four guys impressed the public with their great electronic music with references to Gary Numan, old OMD, Kraftwerk, Old Human League, John Foxx and others. A great performance for such a young band who so much wanted to look like Kraftwerk on stage. During the tour they sold a special album Broken By Silence to keep the flame burning after the concert. And now there is Lights And Offerings, a full album of the quartet, which will keep the flame burning even higher and for much longer. It offers a mix of already known tracks with reletively new ones (not released so far), because all tracks were recorde...

After a hiatus of five years I was asked to return as an editor for the Dutch progressive rock magazine iO Pages. I decided to return back to the music which I hardly listened too for the past years, and see what it would do to me. It was quite a surprise to receive the new album of Pallas as a review copy, since their last studio album was released five years ago. So let me come straight to the point, I think for a lot of us it will be a strange experience to listen to an album of Pallas, where, for the first time in 25 years, Alan Reed is not the singer. Paul Mackie is the replacement, an Aberdeen local, who does a very good job. His voice sounds pleasant, and somehow the vocal arrangements with Graeme Murray are stronger than during the heydays with Alan Reed. It's a gamble, but it pays back very well. Without a doubt musically the album is as strong as you can expect from Pallas. In eleven songs the band returns to Atlantis, where after the optimistic celebratory ending of The ...

What a year 2010 turned out to be. Great concerts, great albums of new acts and old acts. New albums and great re-releases. It was an expensive year, but I enjoyed the music from the first to the last day. And I know we still have some days to go, but by now I can come up with a top 15 of albums of 2010. Since the list of albums was so big and the re-releases were so much, I decided this year to come up with a list of new releases and a list of re-releases, because music is my passion, my first love, and I can not leave all those nice re-releases out of this years list. So first the top 15 of new albums, produced and released over 2010. 01. Marina & The Diamond - The Family Jewels 02. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - History Of Modern 03. Alphaville - Catching Rays On Giants 04. Mirrors - Broken By Silence 05. Hurts - Happiness 06. Customs - Enter The Character 07. Mylene Farmer - Blue...Noir 08. The Script - Science And Faith 09. Steve Hackett - Rails 10. Ultravox - Return To E...

Last weekend I had a nice weekend with friends. While drinking nice beers, eating delicious cheeses, we enjoyed listening to music and watching music DVD's. Around one o'clock two of the three left and we decided to turn on some Rush DVD's, and of course turn up the sound level as well. I put on the X3 DVD set and we played the DVD of the Grace Under Pressure tour enjoying the music very much while drinking from our Westvleteren 12. Since I learned earlier this week Rush will visit the Netherlands next year on their Time Machine Tour, their music hasn't been out of my CD player or on my computer. I have listened to Moving Pictures a lot. It is the album they gonna play entirely during this tour. Friday I managed to get a ticket for the concert and the listening became more intense. Okay Ahoy is not a hall I like to visit, and I promised myself not to go there anymore. But well the problem is, Ahoy is the only hall in the Netherlands big enough for Rush. So for one time ...

It was a long time ago that Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark played the Paradiso in Amsterdam. It was during the Liberator tour in 1994 that Andy McCluskey played there with another band. But tonight it was the original band with a new album History Of Modern, that turned the Paradiso in a great atmosphere. But first it was time for Mirrors, a modern pop-noir electronic four-piece from Brighton, UK, who released four singles sofar, and had a special Limited Tour CD, Broken By Silence for sale in the merchandise stand. They took of with great synthpop sounds which were related to the pioneers in synthpop or electronic music of the late seventies and early eighties. You can hear influences from bands like Tubeway Army, early Depeche Mode, Human League, OMD, Heaven 17, Kraftwerk among others. Their performance is a bit similar to Kraftwerk, as they perform in tuxedo’s and try to stand there as dummies. Only half an hour was enough to show the potential of this young band, which want to r...