On Robin Armstrong’s ninth album as Cosmograf, he turns to the past in the hope of building a better future. The musician tells Prog about the fictional World War Two veteran at the heart of Heroic Materials and the music that inspired his tale.

Words: Stephen Lambe Images: Gravity Dream

“I didn’t want to sing in character as if the album were a musical, but I wanted to get some of the fragility and tenderness of a 99-year-old man as he looks back on his life.”

“The first album was a demo that sort of escaped, really.” Prog is reminiscing about the development of the Cosmograf project in the late 2000s with its sole creative force, the multi-talented Robin Armstrong. We’re discussing 2009’s End Of Ecclesia, though he also notes that there was an even earlier record that remains largely unheard called Freed From The Anguish, which, like his latest album Heroic Materials, has a World War Two theme.

Starting with 2011’s much-praised When Age Has Done Its Duty, Armstrong slimmed down from a ‘cast of thousands’ to become something of a one-man band. “Some of that was a bit cynical,” he admits, “I had seen other bands use this strategy of bringing in guests as a way of gaining press interest, so it seemed like a good way of getting credibility early on.