Simon Says - Tardigrade
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Simon SaysEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2001-01-01
Music Label: PROGROCK
Soundtracks:
- Suddenly the rain
- Tardigrade
- The Chosen One
- Moon Mountain
- As the river runs
- Your Future
- Strawberry Jam
- Circles End
- Brother Where you Bound
- Beautiful New Day
Free Music Notes for Tardigrade
Free Music Review: Great Prog, Great Album
Hit: 5 Stars
For some reason I've held off writing a review on this CD for quite a while. Almost 2 years now that I think about it. Not sure why, because it's one of my favorite disks, and is probably in my top 4 or 5 for play rotation over those last 2 years.
I first heard Simon Says when I was on the road traveling through some former-soviet-satellite-state, and while sitting at the airport, nervously surfing their open wi-fi, I downloaded "Suddenly the Rain" and "Let the Race Begin" (from the band "Moth Vellum") and loaded them on my no-name MP3 player. The reviews seemed positive enough (can't remember if I was able to hear song samples or not), and 99 cents for a 14 minute track was the "right price" in my book.
And at some point within the next couple days while I was out jogging, I had a good chance to listen to both songs and I immediately was feeling VERY pleased with my shot-in-the-dark downloads. First thing I noticed from Simon Says was the vocalist. Wow. Nice, full-bodied voice with an interesting timbre. Anybody who has read a few of my other prog-related reviews knows I'm not too crazy about a lot of the vocalists out there singing in the more modern prog bands. They're not horrible, they just frequently have no personality or they sound like they learned their chops singing with a hair-metal cover band. The Simon Says lead singer, Daniel Fäldt, seriously has a classic prog/rock voice. Back in the 70s you couldn't really get by without a singer who had a really good voice (well, mostly)...Greg Lake, the Phil's (Gabriel and Collins), John Wetton, Ian Gillian (Deep Purple), David Byron (Uriah Heep), and one of the proto-typical rock voices, Roger Daltry. Ok, Daniel Fäldt isn't quite at that level, but he's close and he's a LOT closer than any other post-Spock's Beard era prog singers.
So, based on that first MP3 purchase, about a week later when I came off the road, I one-clicked the whole CD, "Tardigrade", and was almost as blown away with the rest of the CD as I was with "Suddenly the Rain".
There is nothing on Tardigrade that's ground-breaking. It sounds a LOT like classic 70's prog, taking heavily from bands like Genesis, but then adding a modern touch in the production and recording that definitely place it in a more updated era. As already mentioned, the sound is fairly keyboard heavy (lots of classic organ, analog-sounding synth, and some piano) with some solid chunky bass lines (with that classic Rickenbacker-ish Lee-Squire feel), and then a solid supporting role from both the guitar and drums. On a couple tracks the guitar comes up front: "Moon Mountain" is basically one acoustic guitar and one electric guitar playing together, and "Circles End" is a nice piece shaped around acoustic guitar and sounding a LOT like "Entangled" from "A Trick of the Tail" in places (nice, arpeggiated acoustic guitar chords, with backing mellotron-ish string/choir pads, supported by some moog-ish bass pedal sounds, and a vibrato-filled solo synth voice). But despite the similarities, it's still a great song. The granddaddy prog epic of the CD is naturally the 26 and half minute "Brother Where You Bound". Though I did like the same-named Supertramp tune/album, this song nicely stands on its own and is prog at its proggiest! LONG, multi-segmented themes, passages, varying time signatures/tempos/melodies, all nicely developed and tied together coherently.
Trust me, just because a song is long, doesn't mean it's great. The Flower Kings sometimes have a problem making all 20-some minutes of their big songs seem relevant..."Brother Where You Bound" doesn't have that problem and is the crowning jewel on a well-written and well-recorded almost-modern-prog-masterpiece. It's not a super-original modern prog masterpiece, but it is super none-the-less.
And compared to their release previous to this, "Paradise Square" (which I later downloaded) they really did develop the song-writing and recording for "Tardigrade". In quite a few places "Paradise Square" sounds like it's TRYING to sound like prog where "Tardigrade" seems like it comfortably IS prog (if that makes any sense).
In summary: GREAT disk, and if you like classic 70's prog, especially `75-`78 era Genesis, I think you'll seriously dig this as well. And sorry this is such a lengthy review. I tend to babble about things I really enjoy and the length of this review of "Tardigrade" is definitely indicative of how much I liked it!
Tardigrade Poster
Stockholm in the early 90's was throbbing with prog. Numerous bands played small clubs and pubs in Sweden's capital. Most attention was paid to Anekdoten, Änglagaard and Landberk.On the fringes of this underground movement there was a less known band called Egg. An unorthodox band: while sounding as harsh and brutal as both VdGG and Crimson, they still struggled to make their melodies as catchy as those of pop tune.
Bass player of Egg at the time was Stefan Renström, who upon joining them immediately had sensed the band's potential. But when Stefan wanted to lead the band in a certain direction, a lot of friction surfaced. Furthermore, his personal life collapsed and Stefan, unhappily, left both the band and Stockholm to form a new outfit.
Around Christmas '93 he made contact with a then very young Daniel Fäldt, singer of experimental band Leifs Hyvel. Things were settled: Simon Says was to be a project with the two of them as the nucleus.
In March '94 Stefan and producer Kenneth Magnusson started planning Simon Says' first album. In August 1995 Ceinwen was released, to mostly positive reviews. A live act was put together and Simon Says looked like they were growing into a band. After a few gigs, however, the project was put on ice Stefan wasn't happy with the way Simon Says sounded and when both he and Daniel moved they suddenly were too far away from each other to be able to continue anyhow. Daniel started studying philosophy, then drifted off to India and the Middle East for two long periods. Meanwhile, Stefan focused on his role as bass player in his other band, Wagnerian space rockers The Moor, with whom he cut Flux in 1996.
So, while Daniel was studying sitar in India, Stefan and The Moor toured Europe with legendary singer/flute and sax player Nik Turner of Hawkwind. Then, in 2001, Stefan felt he had somehow written a new Simon Says album. Guitarist Jonas Hallberg, Stefan's stand-in on bass in The Moor, was recruited, as well as Mattias Jarlhed (from Valinor's Tree) who recorded the drum parts only four days after having been invited to join.
After four weeks Paradise Square was finished and a deal with Galileo records was struck. The album was released in July 2002 and was met by everything between very good and rave reviews. But after eight months of sporadic rehearsals the band was shelved. Again.
Stefan refused to give Simon Says up, though. In spite of a series of domestic problems culminating in a tragic divorce he dedicated every spare second to write and record new music. And so, the band has in the last years contributed to a series of Musea samplers while all the time working on the main project: the one about survival. Tardigrade.
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