The More You Live, The More You Love

Top ten of the albums on regular play at the moment. A mixture of progressive rock, indie rock, alternative and synthpop made by newbies and long existing bands.   Bastille - Bad Blood Big Big Train - English Electric (part 2) Comedy Of Errors - Fanfare & Fantasy Cosmograf - The Man Left In Space Dutch Uncles - Out Of Touch In The Wild Everything Everything - Arc Fiction - The Big Other Hurts - Exile Mylene Farmer - Monkey Me Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - English Electric

  Last year my friend and I visited the concert of Clock Opera at the Paradiso. They played the small hall that evening in October 2012, but it turned out quite disappointed because of the worse sound. Still we decided to visit them again when they played the Bitterzoet. And This time no disappointments. What a gig. With again the full debut album Ways To Forget, but also three songs released through the deluxe version of the album on iTunes. The sound was suburb, the atmosphere eclectic, and the crowd went crazy. The band has certainly learned from the touring in the past year, since the setlist was build to a climax which the crowd could feel from the start, when first single White Noise opened the set. It was great to hear the extra songs like Let Go The Lifeboats, New Arrivals and Alouette to be performed. After them they build up to a climax, while the crowd certainly was longing for the singles Once And For All and Lesson No 7. The latter played as a last encore, bu...

A Flock Of Seagulls won't be playing Bitterzoet on the 24th of March. the concert, first scheduled for 26 January, was rescheduled on the 24th of March. Unfortuantly I learned recently that the concert is cancelled. Strange but truth. Dates in the UK and Germany are still on the radar, but the MySpace page of the band tells a different story. No tour dates are planned at the moment. A pity since I was really looking forward to see the band again.

Bitterzoet, Amsterdam, 11 March 2013. I received the album Arc for my birthday nearly a month ago, and discovered their concert at Bitterzoet on the internet shortly after. So last Monday me and a friend visited a sold out Bitterzoet and saw Everything Everything in top shape. At a quarter after nine they climbed up the stage and opened the set with Undrowned. From the start the crowd was enthousiastic, as were the band. In five quarter of an hour they played a diverse set from their two albums, with a focus on their just released album Arc. The set contained most of my favourites from this new album, and I saw that I wasn't the only one enjoying it to the max. The sound was very good and well balanced. Every detail was heard and the vocalist Jonathing Higgs established a great performance. The band had hired an extra keyboardplayer to meet the standard of the album. It was over much too soon, but for sure they showed their capabilities. What a band, what a performance...

  It has been awhile since my last entry. already in March of 2013 but for sure I can tell I probably already discovered one of the best albums of this year. It’s called Arc from the Manchester band Everything Everything. From the start I fell in love with most of the songs after a first listening. Cough Cough, the opener is a catchy one this makes you hum with it right away. Kemosabe, the second single from the album, got a great chorus with mellotron all over it. Duet, the third single, reminds me of White Lies with beautiful violin support. And so I can go on. Other highlights are Choice Mountain, Armourland, Radiant, Don’t Try and the beautiful ballad The Peaks. The great thing about this band is that they’re able to give each song a different twist. At first you think you are listening to the next clone of Coldplay, but surely they are in a complete different league. Because they combine it with sounds and atmospheres of White Lies and Clock Opera and deliver it...

I have to say 2012 turned out to be a wonderful year for music. Both in the progressive - and new wave / synthpop scene the releases were wonderful and mostly great productions. At first a list of ten albums would be enough but with so much fine releases over the year I made two top tens. One with the progressive rock music and the other with the new wave / synthpop music. But first the top ten that was send to the magazine I wrote for. The top ten had to be send a couple of weeks ago and since then the number one and number two in that list have switched places, mainly because at the end of November Unheilig released the winter edition of their succesful album Lichter der Stadt and the live album on dvd and cd of their succesful tour of this year. iO Pages top 10 01. It Bites – Map Of The Past 02. Unheilig – Lichter der Stadt 03. The Fixx – Beautiful Friction 04. Big Big Train – English Electric (part 1) 05. Galahad – Beyond The Realms Of Euphoria 06. Clock Opera – Ways To Fo...

Oh boy am I excited. Just scored my tickets for the concert at the Bitterzoet in Amsterdam on 26th of Januari. How time has flied. Already three years ago since they played the Paradiso. Recently all their albums were re-released with bonustracks. It's a pity any new material has been released in all those years. The two new tracks they played three years ago sounded promising. Well see what we can expect in two months.