Evergrey and Dragonforce are two of my son Andrew’s favorite bands and over the last few years they have been in my music library. Music from both bands often becomes my running music, Dragonforce by choice and Evergrey by happenstance. Many times a track from Evergre4y will come on when the iPod is on random shuffle.When that happens, I usually catch myself thinking this sounds good, then after checking who the and is, and I discover it’s Evergrey!! Now the question you may be asking about now is – why are you telling me this?? .The answer lies in the music I was listening to last night and hoped to make the soundtrack of my run tonight!!
Yesterday, I was looking for some new prog rock. to listen to and tried several new releases. I gave each of them the 30 second test and settled on the album, Pictures From A Time Traveller from Marcus Jidell . The decision to pick this album was a combination of the 30 second test and reading the following at New Prog Rock Releases:
While there is no doubt this is a guitar album, “Pictures From A Time Traveller” has its own unique voice boasting incredible utilization of dynamics and a variety of styles all of which paint a vast number of picture in the listeners mind, something Marcus was keen to express while writing..
So after listening to and enjoying the album I came back and read about the album, I discovered that Marcus Jidell is the lead guitarist for Evergrey!!…. From Lion Music:
Marcus Jidell is one of the most respected metal guitarists to have come out of Sweden since Yngwie Malmsteen. With a guitar style that has won him universal acclaim, Marcus is a current member of one of Sweden’s biggest and hardest touring metal acts evergrey, and previously has worked with prog-metallers Royal Hunt. Marcus has a very personalised sound, extremely heavy at one end, yet extremely melodic at the other, all the time with a superb feel for phrasing and originality of song craft, and its these traits which are evident throughout “Pictures From A Time Traveller”. On his goal for the album Marcus comments, “I wanted to make an instrumental album that was more then just shred. I wanted to make compositions that were interesting to listen to even if you’re not a guitar player. In short, I wanted to write good music with electric instruments that didn’t sound like anything I heard before”.
So I was all set to listen to the album on my run tonight. But when I was getting ready to run, I couldn’t find my headphones. What I did find were the iPod ear buds, Now I need to wear headphone with over the ear clips, because the ear buds always fall out. Well, I tried them anyway and just like always – they fell out within the first quarter-mile! Now I would normally be bummed but, I was moving pretty fast for me and not feeling too bad!! I finished the 4 mile run with my best pace, 10:10 per mile, since I’ve upped my training miles! The great thing was that my first two miles were under 10 minute per mile pace and the next two miles weren’t all that bad!! So the only really minus was that I didn’t to listen to Jidell’s album again like I wanted to do before I wrote about the atmospheric tracks I heard one’s like “Huldra – Ruler of the Forest”. who I believe is very large and makes the forest rumble as he moves through it. In the track “El-Amarna (Ruins Of Akhetaton)” I was transported to Egypt and I wanted to visit again before I told you about it. And were those electrical sounds that I heard on “Tesla World System”?? And Marcus says this about the song. “Arctica”
“When I write I see a lot of pictures and colours and that’s what I’ve been trying to make the listener feel. If you listen carefully to ‘Arctica’ for example you might feel the cold wind, the ice and snow, the silence of the Arctic winter that suddenly breaks when you discover the big polar bear that has been sneaking upon you.. And you start to run”.
Here’s a sampler of music from Pictures From A Time Traveller. Check out the album!