So once again I listen to a band, I like their music , I go to read about the band and I find, the band is mostly a one-person band and the music fits into the Neo-Prog sub-genre!! In this instance, the band is Cosmograf and the rock project leader is Robin Armstrong, a multi-instrumentalist from Waterlooville (near Portsmouth) in the United Kingdom. (We pause now to give in to my ADD and to find out more about Waterlooville)
Waterlooville is a town in Hampshire, England, near the southern cost of England, approximately 8 miles north of Portsmouth. From Wikipedia:
Legend has it that it was named after the pub that stood at the centre of the village, then known as Wait Lane End where the stage coach horses waited to change places with the team that pulled the coach up and over Portsdown Hill. The Heroes of Waterloo was so named because, on its opening day, in 1815, soldiers who had just disembarked at Portsmouth, returning from the Battle of Waterloo, decided to stop there and celebrate their victory. According to local legend, many of them settled there. The public house was renamed in their honour and the area around the pub became known as Waterlooville. Read More
Cosmograf’s sound is rooted in the sounds of Armstrong’s, youth 70s classic rock, with Armstrong’s addition of a contemporary and progressive twist. Along with his duties as producer, Armstrong also plays guitar, keyboards, bass and drums, writes the music and records himself and his collaborating musicians, in his self-built home studio!! Another one of those do everything people, that turn me green with envy! Armstrong says this about his music…..
I’ve always enjoyed music that polarizes audiences and demands attention. As a teenager I was captivated by Deep Purple’s fusion of Heavy Rock with Baroque intros or lead lines. It’s just fun, to throw in something that is completely unexpected but yet just fits.
I much prefer to write music around concepts. Progressive Rock allows you the freedom to span genres, stop and start in different tempos, insert mad sound effects and generally tell a story or simply create a soundscape with no real meaning. This creates a musical freedom far beyond the commerical rules and constraints of a 3 min pop song.
The album that I have enjoyed is Capacitor and it is the fifth release from Cosmograf, and is the follow-up to their highly rated album The Man Left in Space. The following musicians collaborated with Armstrong on the album.
- Nick D’Virgilio (Big Big Train, Spock’s Beard, Genesis) / drums
- Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree) / bass
- Nick Beggs (Steven Wilson, Steve Hackett, Lifesigns) / bass on ‘Stuck in the Wood’
- Matt Stevens (Matt Stevens, The Fierce and the Dead) / guitar on ‘Stuck in the Wood’
- Andy Tillison (The Tangent) / keyboards
- Steve Dunn (Colourflow, Also Eden) / bass
Looks like a formidable group of musicians to me, maybe that’s why it is musically so good!! But not only is the music good, but the songs are great, too! This is where we get back to the start of this post and the town of Waterlooville, because on his blog at his website, Armstrong says this about the album…
The album was inspired by the many hours I spent walking around my local town of Waterlooville. I thought a lot about how the area would have looked many years ago, and all the people, now dead, who had trod the same path as me. Ghosts have always fascinated me. I don’t really believe in them in a physical sense, but I do believe the testimonies of the many friends and family that have witnessed them. Talking to these people first hand is enough to convince me that they experienced something real to them which is very difficult to explain in scientific terms. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, we all experience the legacy of past lives lived, everywhere we go. It’s the storage of human spirit… Read More
So Check it out – as for me I’m checking out The Man Left in Space…….
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Here’s the video for the track “The Fear Created”…..