Quasi 20 anni dopo Hybris, e 18 dopo Epilog, il più grande gruppo Prog della storia si riunisce, e presto darà alle stampe un nuovo e terzo album.
Teoricamente mi starebbero sotto casa (io sto ad Oslo, loro sono di Stoccolma), ma per celebrare l'uscita dell'album decidono di fare UN concerto, e non è che lo fai in Svezia no, dove lo vai a fà? In Pensilvagna.

Ma nel 1992, fin da questo intro di piano



decisi che un giorno sarei andato a vederli dal vivo.
Dopo 20 anni durante i quali ho fatto in tempo ad imparare a memoria ogni singolo suono dei due album in questione, il giorno sta per arrivare.

Oltretutto suoneranno nell'ambito dell'ultima edizione di NEARfest, un festival progressive mica male, che vedrà ai nastri di partenza anche un certo Peter Hammill e il suo Generatore di Van Der Graaf... E pare che gli Änglagård suoneranno tutto il primo album Hybris, un po' come i Pink Floyd quando fecero tutto The Dark Side nel tour del 1994 (c'ero, of course).
I biglietti per i 3 giorni partono da 160 dollarozzi... qualche progghettaro mi fa compagnia?

Una reunion per fare un terzo album? Interessante....

Citazione di: Brunost il 01 Dic 2011, 23:38
il più grande gruppo Prog della storia

Beh non esageriamo adesso però!!

Citazione di: Fabio70rm il 17 Dic 2011, 11:35
Beh non esageriamo adesso però!!

Giusto, ho dimenticato di includere la preistoria

Notizia last second: un par di settimane fa hanno annunciato un concerto domani a Stoccolma
Preso un giorno di ferie lunedi', domanisera ci sarò!!!


(Sempre se gliene frega qualcosa a qualcuno )

Porca miseria, da non perderlo!

Citazione di: Brunost il 01 Dic 2011, 23:38
Quasi 20 anni dopo Hybris, e 18 dopo Epilog, il più grande gruppo Prog della storia si riunisce, e presto darà alle stampe un nuovo e terzo album.
Teoricamente mi starebbero sotto casa (io sto ad Oslo, loro sono di Stoccolma), ma per celebrare l'uscita dell'album decidono di fare UN concerto, e non è che lo fai in Svezia no, dove lo vai a fà? In Pensilvagna.

Ma nel 1992, fin da questo intro di piano

decisi che un giorno sarei andato a vederli dal vivo.
Dopo 20 anni durante i quali ho fatto in tempo ad imparare a memoria ogni singolo suono dei due album in questione, il giorno sta per arrivare.

Oltretutto suoneranno nell'ambito dell'ultima edizione di NEARfest, un festival progressive mica male, che vedrà ai nastri di partenza anche un certo Peter Hammill e il suo Generatore di Van Der Graaf... E pare che gli Änglagård suoneranno tutto il primo album Hybris, un po' come i Pink Floyd quando fecero tutto The Dark Side nel tour del 1994 (c'ero, of course).
I biglietti per i 3 giorni partono da 160 dollarozzi... qualche progghettaro mi fa compagnia?

Così, se gliene dovesse fregare qualcosa a qualcuno, beccatevi un video live (non mio):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuEFKZdwTFk

e un copincolla della mia umile e "breve" recensione

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My personal story with Änglagård begins in Via di Porta Castello, a small but busy road near the center of Rome, Italy, 1992.
I was driving in the congested late afternoon traffic with my then-girlfriend, while a local rock-oriented radio starts playing "some Swedish progressive band". The piano intro starts, then the rest of the band kicks in for Jordrök, and my girlfriend knows that I am having another one of my musical seizures. I stop the car, grab a piece of paper, write down the name "Anglagard", as the DJ pronounced it and rush home.
The day after I run to my favourite record shop and get my copy of Hybris.

That was the unlikely beginning of my biggest musical love story, a story that I thought would only be one-sided for the rest of my life; I have been listening regularly to either Epilog or Hybris at least once a month regularly for the last 20 years, and I look for Änglagård references in basically any piece of progressive music that I listen to.

The story jumps all the way to 2012, while my life, in the meantime, has taken me to live in Oslo.
As I said, I thought that the dream of seeing Änglagård play live would never come true... but then one day I sign up to the band's Facebook page and find out that... YES! The guys (and the girl) are rehearsing a new album and will play live in summer 2012!!!
Then suddenly, an event comes out on the FB page, announcing that Änglagård will play in Stockholm in not more than 2 weeks.

Needless to say, I got the ticket in 5 minutes, alerted a friend of mine who would host me and got my cheap flight ticket as well (with tens of flights daily between Oslo and Stockholm, it was no hard feat, thank God).
And here we are, it's Sunday, 22.04.2012, and I am in Stockholm.

I arrive at Bryggarsalen 1 hour before the event fearing that everyone would be already in and that there could be no place for me, but the place was big enough to accommodate everyone and filled up slowly; there is enough time to exchange impressions with other members of the audience as well as with the musicians, and around 20:15, the lights go down, and finally, after 20 years of waiting, Änglagård are on stage, not more than one meter away from me!

The gig started with a piece from the new album (you can hear the guitar riff in one of the videos posted on the FB pages and on the http://www.anglagard.net website), which sounded ready for the final version, which we will be gladly waiting for very soon
then after a few welcome words from Anna, which being non-Swedish I could not really understand, Johan introduced Höstsejd, and for those who had not seen them live before, it was like meeting an old friend, one that we have not seen for years but we spoke to on the phone all the time: the sounds were familiar, but seeing them played right before our eyes was an emotion that, even with more than 20 years of small and big gigs watched, I would easily rank among my absolute Top 3.

The "crazy" finale was absolutely powerful and left us shaking and wanting for more, which came with another new piece, whose title I am sorry but I did not really grasp, and then comes the moment I had been waiting for since that day in the middle of a traffic jam in Via di Porta Castello in Rome.
Then Mr. Jonas "WeNeedTheMoney" Engdegård takes the center of the stage, and while reminding us that we should buy CDs and T-shirts (shame on me, I had not enough cash ), he thanks us for coming to what they thought would have been an evening with a few friends and turned out to be bigger (but are we not all your friends since 1992? , and then introduces the fourth and last piece of the official set.

At this point, David Lundberg (who replaces Thomas live) turns to his Rhodes piano and starts what I call "The 90's Firth Of Fifth". It was Jordrök, it was sweetness, it was power, it was a flood of musical emotions; in one small yet big word, it was Änglagård, nothing more, nothing less. For those who have been waiting for that piano intro since 1992, this was the defining moment of the evening... but the evening was not over yet, there was still time for an encore, for the last summer, for Sista Somrar, and while everyone was cheering and asking for more, for Mattias to come on stage and inform us that "we have no more songs", and it was time to go.

Time to go it was not, because almost everyone stayed there to exchange a few words with the guys and Anna, to get their records signed, to buy CDs and T-shirts making Jonas a happy man, and simply to savour the emotions that were still lingering in the Bryggarsalen room.

My emotions are still here with me while I write my humble recollection of that evening. During these 20 years of intensive listening to their two albums, I had always pictured Änglagård as one single unit, where while of course you could hear the different instruments, you could not really tell Anna from Mattias, or Jonas from Johan or Thomas.
It was one compact and solid entity, a bit like the definition that Robert Fripp used to describe King Crimson's Wetton/Bruford rhythm section: "a flying brick wall".

The emotion, for me, was seeing the individual contribution, the small bricks that each one of these five masons was laying to create this wall.
It was standing a few inches from Anna, and while shooting my flash in her eyes all the time, witnessing in real life how her flute, which may sound like delicate and weak when compared to other instruments, is actually the driving force, it is what acts as a catalyzer to bring together the other "standard" rock music instruments... and how she is what I called "the quiet force" in the Änglagård sound.

It was being right before Mattias, my favourite drummer ever (but don't tell him!), a guy who was just 17 in 1992 but he already had a unique drumming style that was (and is) precise, crisp and powerful at the same time. And it was funny to see how he can be very Swedishly shy, clutching his hands like a shy 5-year-old when he is speaking on the microphone, and then a few minutes (and beers) later, very Swedishly funny while taking pictures with your writer... all this, of course, without missing a beat on the hundreds of "toys" that surround him.

His beat, of course, could not be the same without the other half of the "Swedish Flying Brick Wall": Johan Brand on bass.
Bass is what gives a direction to the beat, what creates a connection between Mattias's drums and the other instruments, and he does it in a way that is strong and clean, solid and delicate, elaborate and simple at the same time, or in short, in a very progressive way.

On top of this "direction" stands David Lundberg on keyboards. Not merely a replacement for Thomas, he plays his part very well, standing on the right side of that fine line that progressive keyboard  players know very well; I, for one, while of course acknowledging their technical prowess, have never been a huge fan of "overwhelming" keyboard players such as Wakeman or Emerson, whose style is, in my very humble opinion, more of a showoff than a real contribution to the music.
Well, in Änglagård the Mellotron (ah, that white box that changed music...), synth and piano lay some sort of "musical carpet" where others can comfortably walk without fear of stepping in the wrong place.

And the one who knows very well where to step is Mr. WeNeedTheMoney, a.k.a. Jonas Engdegård. Taking the lead on his guitar without being an absolute leader, he makes it scream with his vibrato, only to turn to delicate arpeggios a few seconds later, and then back. Another example of how their music can be "sometimes aggressive, sometimes contemplative and almost always heavy with wistfulness and stoicism" (quoted from the www.anglagard.net page .

All these individual contributions make up the unique Änglagård sound that has captivated a small but faithful fanbase (which includes myself, of course). A fanbase that has been waiting for all this time and will religiously and patiently  be waiting for a third, a fourth and so on albums.

Just one small note to Anna, Mattias, Jonas, Johan and Thomas: while asking you not to keep us waiting 20 more years, I feel that I can ask you to make us wait for the time that YOU think is necessary. Änglagård  is a band that makes music when it feels like making it, and only by doing this it can make the right music, the music that we will keep appreciating.

And you can be sure that we will be by your side.
Thanks for that night at Bryggarsalen, thanks for being Änglagård.