THE MUSIC THAT DIED ALONE

The Music that Died Alone is the debut album from The Tangent. A band that started out as a project formed by former frontman and keyboardist in Parallel or 90 Degrees Andy Tillison but after the success of this album The Tangent has growned into a real band.

On The Music That Died Alone Andy Tillison is helped by some pretty prominant gentlemen. Roine Stolt ( The Flower Kings) plays guitar and sings on In Darkest Dreams, Jonas Reingold ( The Flower Kings) plays bass, Zoltan Czorsz ( The Flower Kings) plays drums), Sax and flute legend from Van der Graaf Generator David Jackson also contributes to the album while Andy Tillison´s old collegues from Parallel or 90 Degrees Sam Baine ( Piano and synths) and Guy Manning ( guitars, vocals and keyboards) also contribute. With a cast like that this album just couldn´t fail to deliver and didn´t.

I´ve had this album since it came out. At the time it was released I was heavily into The Flower Kings and as I saw that Roine Stolt was involved on The Music That Died Alone I had to have the album. I was initially disappointed about the inaccessible nature of the music. I say inaccessible not because this is not melodic or memorable music but because it took me a long time to diggest the pretty long tracks. It always confused me with all the subtitles and I never seemed to get a grip of the album. Well things change for better or worse and in this case fortunately for the better. Within the last half year I have begun to give this album more and more spins and grown increasingly happier about it. Today I wouldn´t live without it.

The album starts with the 20 minute song In Darkest Dreams. It´s subdivided into smaller songs but there is a cohesiveness to the whole affair which means that this seems like one long song. It´s a great song with Roine Stolt and Andy Tillison sharing the vocal duties. David Jackson is heard from the start. His playing is very dominant at times. Really great work. There are also lots of great synth and organ work throughout the song and plenty of solo work for all lead instruments.

The Canterbury Sequence is a great ode to the Canterbury scene sound. To those of us who love that sound it´s great to hear that others love it too. It´s a light jazz/ rock which like In Darkest Dreams is subdivided into smaller bits. Again David Jackson plays some great parts.

Up Hill From Here is another great symphonic rock song. The Tangent has a really pleasant sound not unlike the one played by The Flower Kings even though they don´t sound that much alike. It´s just the soft and complex constructions of the songs which makes me compare the two bands.

The title track ends the album in great style. Like In Darkest Dreams this track is subdivided into smaller tracks which makes a whole. Again there are many great parts with lots of nice sounds. Andy Tillison´s vocals was one of the things that took my many yeards to appreciate but it was a song like this one that made me realise that he is in fact a very good singer. He has the singing/ talking style that Roine Stolt also often uses.

The musicianship is fantastic on this album and if you should not like the music at least aknowledge the great musicianship.

The production is excellent. Everything is right in the mix.

This is a great prog rock album and even though this is not very modern and the influences are clearly the great seventies prog rock heroes this is just excellent music. I´ll rate The Music That Died Alone 4 very well deserved stars. The Tangent lacks a bit in the originality department which I hope will show itself on their later albums, but if it doesn´t this is still excellent music and a welcome addition to my prog rock collection ( well it´s been there for several years as I told you earlier).