IF IT’S OUT THERE, IT’S IN HERE

TILLISON GOES SOLO ON NEW TANGENT LP

While the rest of the band are out on the road with other projects, Andy Tillison takes the reigns and records latest album on his own.

Andy Tillison: just like the titular pole star, he’s going it alone.

PRESS/CHRIS WALKDEN

UK prog mainstays The Tangent have announced their 13th studio album, To Follow Polaris – and singer-keyboard player Andy Tillison reveals that it’s a solo record in the truest sense.

“It’s what Elon Musk would refer to as ‘absolutist’,” says Tillison of his decision to handle all the instruments on the record himself.

“Every Tangent album has had this sliding doors moment, where I could go off and finish it myself or I could bring in the other guys. This time, I wondered if I could take it the whole way. Plus it just happened that some of the others weren’t available this time.”

As with every Tangent album, To Follow Polaris – out via InsideOutMusic on May 10 – was recorded in Tillison’s home studio.

“I gave myself the chance to play things that I never would have before,” he says. “I’ve been playing the drums for years, but I’ve never got a chance to play them on a Tangent album. And I got my first bass at Christmas 2022 –

I’d never needed one before because I’m in a band with Jonas Reingold, so it would be ridiculous. But I think the bass on this record sounds pretty damn good.

Though rest assured, the bassist fell out with the drummer!”

“I gave myself the chance to play things that Inever would have before.”

Tillison describes To Follow Polaris as ultimately an “optimistic” record. Indeed, opening track The North Sky ties in lyrically with the album’s title.

“For me, it’s all about truth,” he says. “Everybody‘s arguing about everything: did we land on the Moon? Is the Earth flat? Did he say that? Did she do this? It’s crazy. I wanted to find one thing that nobody can argue about, because it’s always there in the north, all the other stars go round it. Even the flat-Earth people can’t deny Polaris.”

The album’s five tracks range from the blackly humorous The Fine Line (“There’s a Venn Diagram with one circle that says ‘The Apocalypse’ and the other that says ‘Having To Go To Work’ and the area in the middle is where we’ve ended up”) to A Like In The Darkness, which finds Tillison questioning the value and worth of art in a world where success is measured in online clicks.

“Time after time, I’ve been sat here late at night, writing the songs and putting them together, with a light burning that nobody else can see,” he says. “There always comes this point where you think, what am I doing this for? People are fighting wars, and all I have to offer is this pathetic little tune. How many lives is that going to save? How beneficial is that going to be?’ All artists ask themselves that question.”

To Follow Polaris’s longest track, the 21-minute The Anachronism, casts a cynical and angry view at the people who are ruining things for everyone else.

“The anachronism it refers to are actual real people – Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson – at the time I wrote it,”says Tillison. “It’s people who are manifestly out of tune with the world that we live in. These be-suited geriatrics who are pushing us into wars that none of us want because of their massive egos.”

Tillison says the follow-up to To Follow Polaris is already “on the cooker”, though it won’t be another solo album. Nor does he have any plans to tour this latest record as a one-man band.

“No, The Tangent is a band,” he says emphatically. “If we do decide to play any of the songs off this record, I’ll play them with the band. It‘s still a Tangent record, it’s part of their repertoire.” For more, see thetangent.org.

DEV

JOHN CARPENTER GOES INTO THE DARK

The classic imagery of film noir inspires new album Lost Themes IV: Noir.

Dark stars: John Carpenter with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

PRESS/SOPHIE GRANSARD

“The imagery is bold,” ponders Daniel Davies as he recalls how a chance Christmas gift of a book of stills from noir films from the 1940s from John Carpenter’s wife, Sandy, to her husband, came to inspire Lost Themes IV: Noir, which is released via Sacred Bones on May 3.

Davies, who has worked with Carpenter and his son Cody across the Lost Themes series, says, “When I’m hanging out with John, we’re always talking about movies and what we think about them – the imagery and how music works in movies. As I was looking through the book, it had such strong images and contrasts and I started asking John which his favourite film noir films were. And then I thought, ‘Why don’t we base an album on his favourite noir films?’”

With titles such as My Name Is Death, Kiss The Blood Off My Fingers and He Walks By Night, the album evokes noir films of the 1940s and 1950s throughout.

Explaining the compositional process, Davies says, “In some cases, the title led the songs while some titles fit the songs that were written. It worked both ways. In the case of My Name Is

Death, John had written that down and I was looking at it and came up with the bass line and then we started working on it.”

Ironically, the composition of real soundtracks is preventing the trio from playing live.

“We’re working on some film scores right now so concerts depend on the schedule,” laughs Davies. “We’ll have to see.”

See www.johncarpentermusic.bandcamp.com.

JM

PORTALS FESTIVAL 2024 LINE-UP IS ANNOUNCED

This Will Destroy You and If These Trees Could Talk top bill.

Portals Festival, the UK’s leading post-rock, math rock and new progressive festival held in London in May, has unveiled its full bill, with US post-rockers This Will Destroy You announced as Saturday headliners. They join fellow countrymen If These Trees Could Talk, who headline the Sunday night of the two-day event.

Portals Festival takes place at EartH in Hackney on the weekend of May 25-26 and will feature 35 bands over three stages.

“We’re stunned to have secured This Will Destroy You as headliners for Portals Festival 2024,” says Festival Director Asher Kenton. “They’re a band who have shaped both the post-rock genre and our personal music tastes. So many bands on the line-up would cite them as major influences, so to be able to bring together legends of the genre with incredible new up-andcoming artists is an absolute joy.”

See www.portalsrock.com/festival for full line-up and ticket details.

JE

If These Trees Could Talk: not the whispering grass.

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KAVUS TORABI OPENS THIRD EYE

Psychedelic musician goes foraging for the magic ingredient on his new album.

Navigating consciousness: Kavus Torabi.

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Singer-guitarist Kavus Torabi has claimed that a “heroic dose” of magic mushrooms not only helped him finish his new solo album, The Banishing, which is released on May 3 via Believers Roast, but also that the experience was “atheism-dissolving”.