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Almost 100 years ago, the most important moment in the history of Electronic Communications took place, but was mainly seen as a disaster. A Morse Code distress call, made on April 14, 1912 resulted in the saving of many hundreds of lives from the RMS Titanic, lives that would have been lost without the new “radio”. In these 100 years, Titanic’s ripples in the magnetosphere have seen people rescued from Space, the birth of TV, the massive surge forward of the Internet and mobile communications technology. A world that is more and more “humdrum”, but in which the Tangent find both positive and negative things to sing about. The Tangent from Northern England have always taken a leading role in electronic communications. In 1996 Tangent leader Andy Tillison Diskdrive posted the first ever promotional band MP3 file on the Internet on the day that the Fraunhofer mp3 codec was released, (quite a claim – it was posted within hours of the software’s release so it is 99.9 percent certain that this was the first “band-made MP3″ ever) and the Tangent were celebrated for recording their first album using the Net to connect the UK with Sweden, making that album before the members at the time had even met each other. Now they turn their musical attention to the forces that brought them together and “Bite The Hand that feeds them” with glee. Not only that, but there is a solo on the album played by a musician who took part in the Tangent’s competition to record a solo specially for the band over the Net. Musicians from all over the world submitted solos, and Tangent fans voted on the best one. Another first for the band.
The band has existed since the late 1970s in a variety of forms and lineups, choosing the name “The Tangent” for a gig in 1979 only to find that the name was taken by a local punk band. Andy & Jonathan have been working together now for over 25 years and waited a long time to re-adopt the name.
The Tangent have now managed to re-invent themselves so many times that it’s hard to count all the people who have been in it. But every lineup has succeeded in delivering top class Progressive Rock music, usually far more on target than many of the reformed “big name” bands from the 70s. Their six studio albums for Insideout Music are a strong testament to that claim, and anyone whose heart was won over by “Foxtrot” but was disappointed by “We Can’t Dance” should look at this remarkable band from England who have persisted in making the difficult musical choices and keeping true to Prog Rock’s original spirit while keeping it fresh and relevant to now.
“I always try to let the band I HAVE play like they want to play” says Andy Tillison, sole surviving member of the 2003 Swedish/British unit and main writer/lyricist for the Tangent since the beginning, “and I write the songs for the band at the time. We’re a real band, working together, discussing and making our music together and this album is OURS. Jonathan has written a track for this album too, and I hope there’ll be more from him, and Luke, in the future. Every title is our most important album so far, because this is still our first time. Our music is written NOW, about NOW, our influences are from NOW and so what if we show our influences from the past? The past is part of all artists’ palette and should be seen as a fantastic resource to anyone, however original they wish to appear.
COMM is our 6th album, it’s an album once again about the world that we live in, here in 2011 and it marks a hundred years of the way we live our lives in what we sometimes call “A Shrinking World”. We are obsessed with Communications nowadays and this album takes a look at those obsessions from several different points of view, which are not always favourable!
This album is the debut studio recording of Luke Machin, a stunning 22 year old guitar player who has taken fans by storm at gigs around Europe in the past 18 months. Despite his youth, Luke is heavily influenced by the great progressive rock guitarists from Francis Dunnery to Andy Latimer, Allan Houldsworth and Daniel Gildenlow.
COMM has taken 2 years to write and record. The cover artworks marks a return to the popular partnership between The Tangent and Belarussian artist Ed Unitsky. COMM will be released in 3 editions, a special edition with 2 bonus tracks (one of which is an unusual cover version) which will be released in a limited first pressing digipak edition. And there will also be a limited 180 g VINYL edition with a gatefold sleeve.
RELEASE EUROPE: Sept. 26th (2011)
RELEASE G/S/A: Sept. 23rd (2011)
