Band:ALEXANDER WIESER
Title: Rehearsal Format: White CDr disc in bespoke paper sleeve housed in a plastic wallet. No label or catalogue reference details, but a home-made demo/rehearsal disc from the heart of W.A.R. Productions. This release was recorded circa 2016/17.
Edition:Uncertain, but only a handful of copies one imagines
Track Listing:
01. Untitled 7.06
02. Untitled 6.30
03. Untitled 6.38
04. Untitled 6.38
05. Untitled 8.45
06. Untitled 6.14
07. Untitled 6.42
08. Untitled 6.18
09. Untitled 6.38
10. Untitled 7.06
I drove to the moon yesterday.
Well, more accurately, Nazgul’s car hit a total mileage figure that equates to having driven from earth to the moon (at the closest point to us in its orbit, admittedly) at around 238,500 miles, give or take a bit. That’s no mean feat, and puts me over 600,000 miles in various cars since 1987. Interestingly, however, I completely failed to spot the moment this momentous event took place yesterday – despite having been primed to look out for it for some weeks now – and this omission was entirely due to being lost once again in the rehearsal CD that features in today’s post.
As ever, when Hugin goes off on one of his side-projects, there’s always an element of the unexpected in the musical content that follows. You only need look at the vast array of styles and projects that he has released over the years to appreciate that the next venture could literally be anything, from a stab at an Ozric Tentacles-eque psych-jam to a reggae-ska mash-up.
So what does this demo hold in store? Well, a lazy-man’s casual glance at the cover art might put you in mind of “Script For A Jester’s Tear” from erstwhile progressive/soft rockers Marillion, so would that vein of music be in the ballpark? Happily, yes. Sort of.
There’s a real mixture of stuff going on here that would comfortably be encompassed by the term ‘soft rock’ and which would, if prodded with a sharp stick, probably respond positively to the epithet ‘prog rock’ too in places. So no soundtrack synths, no Viking vocals, and definitely no Sergiy shouting on this one. No, we get acoustic guitars, some rather nice piano, the occasional bout of rather out of place aggressive guitar too, and some mixed-quality vocals to wrap up the whole. It’s a demo, so you’ll not getting the final polished product here of course, so the odd dodgy vocal part is fine – if in doubt, bring someone else in to knock them out in the studio and make it a better product.
I’m rather partial to giving this a spin now, and wonder (since it’s been languishing in Uncle Nazgul’s collection for some time now whilst I had the recent hiatus) what ever happened to it in terms of formally turning rehearsals into a final product of some sort?
That early lazy man’s interpretation that this is a bit Marillion-y is probably not too far wide of the mark, though to be fair I’ve not kept pace with the more recent Marillion output. The demo as a whole certainly opens up new directions of travel for yet more music variety from our favourite Austrian, and only time (and space) will tell whether anything more tangible will come of it…
