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The bars and restaurants on the Martelarenplein next to the venue all have a lot of different lighter and stronger beers! We’re in Belgium after all ;-)
Review from Progwereld (Dutch – through Google Translate):
The men of Motorpsycho certainly did not sit still during the pandemic. They released “The All Is One” and “Kingdom Of Oblivion”, a film project was started in collaboration with the Norwegian theater group De Utvalgte, the result of which will be released in the near future, and they wrote the music for a dance performance by Homan Sharifi and his Impure Dance Company: Sacfificing. The latter project is important for this review. Some of the music for that performance already existed, N.O.X. of “The All Is One” turned out to fit wonderfully, but a part also had to be rewritten. Those are, according to the information the band provides with the music, Mona Lisa Azrael and Chariot Of The Sun – To Phaeton On The Occasion Of Sunrise (Theme From An Imagined Movie). In the summer of 2021 the music was recorded in Oslo by Ryan, Sæther and Järmyr, together with producer and former band member Helge “Deathprod” Sten. Reine Fiske was not there, according to the band because international travel was still a problem at that time (Fiske lives in Stockholm), but now he is also marked as 'Best Friend' on the band's website and not as a current band member. The band played the music almost live, only the vocals were added later. You can also hear the live dynamics well in the music. Motorpsycho is not a tame band anyway, but this adds a nice layer. You can immediately hear that in The Ladder, a piece that apparently has nothing to do with the ballet, but was added to the record anyway. It's furious music with a starring role for drummer Järmyr, who I've never heard better drumming before. Sæther adds such a typical Motorpsycho vocal line, accessible and yet completely blown away. The Flower Of Awareness is actually a prelude, two minutes of ambient doodles, the importance of which escapes me. It flows seamlessly into Mona Lisa Azrael, which brings us to the main body of this record. The piece starts with beautiful Mellotron chords and a waltz, which immediately made me think of Epitaph by King Crimson. Very nicely done. After four minutes, the gentlemen put their socks in place a bit and the waltz gives way to a fast 6-quartz and a clearly improvised guitar solo. Handsome guy who can dance to that a little sensible, by the way. Here too Järmyr's strong playing stands out, what a world drummer he is. After ten minutes the piece is actually over, but the guitars are still buzzing for two minutes.
The last piece takes up half of the plate. Chariot Of The Sun – To Phaeton On The Occasion Of Sunrise starts quietly with a rhythm guitar over an electronic arpeggio, a nice resting point after the previous violence. Gradually more melody lines are added, but only after four minutes a theme starts to emerge, aided by dreamy vocals. That sleepy atmosphere lingers for another minute or so, but then the band kicks in. Lots of fanning guitar parts above that characteristic, overdriven bass guitar. And just when you think: “Now something may happen,” then the men transition into a piece with many accents and the music slowly gets wilder. Because yes, the sun is rising, isn't it? The stirring rock is getting fuller and fuller, after 14 minutes you even think you recognize the influences of Yes at its busiest. Then the whole thing collapses and it slowly builds up again to a new climax, until four minutes before the end we are back at the dreamy atmosphere of the beginning. An opus with a head and a tail, what more could you want? That's the beauty of Motorpsycho: at first hearing it looks like a psychedelic space-rock band with the volume knob at 11 and the gaze at infinity, but if you listen more closely you discover new layers, new themes that inevitably arise from the previous. Brilliantly done, beautiful album.
Anyone volunteering to refresh the Stickman homepage every 5 minutes for the upcoming 2 weeks (and let us know when they're up for sale)?
Very nice review from Weirdo Shrine and a really cool short interview with Bent too. So Snah, Bent, Tomas and their partners all live in one big building with separate compartments now? Or is that one of those "We always tell the truth, except when we lie. And we lie a lot"-moments, described at the end of the interview?
From the Stickman newsletter: "In four tracks, Motorpsycho present a summary of their exploits in the past years: blistering prog rock, experimental soundscapes, heavy rock grooves, theatrical breakdowns, and lengthy, epic buildups."
Three songs on the A-side, Ny lang on the B-side is my guess?
Also haha: "We have enough stock for everyone, so there's no need to storm the website right at 11 o'clock!"
@Juergen I can't seem to find it online anymore, but I just found it in my own mailbox (the advantages of sending stuff to yourself, just in case…). So that was almost 9 years ago, I'd discovered MP a few months earlier and I had (next to) no experience with interviews or journalism (and almost no time to prepare), so bear with me…
Also not in my mother tongue…It was an interview for the student magazine of Universitetet i Tromso, called Utropia. I think the Word version I have is about 95% of what eventually appeared in the magazine.
I also wrote a 'review' of their 2013 Driv gig, but can't seem to find it anywhere, not online, not in my mailbox…
Where can I send the interview to?
Cool! Love these kinds of lists…
Concerts visited: 17 (2013-2022)
Locations: all different ones, except for Het Depot (Leuven, BE) twice (and a third time later this year)
NL, 03/08/2013: Nirwana Tuinfeest, Lierop (festival)
NO, 11/09/2013: Driv, Tromso
BE, 29/05/2014: VK, Brussels
NL, 28/06/2015: Down The Rabbit Hole (festival)
BE, 05/09/2015: Villa Pace, Sint-Niklaas (festival)
BE, 29/04/2016: Het Depot, Leuven
NL, 30/04/2016: TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht
DE, 04/08/2017: Krach am Bach, Beelen (festival)
IT, 01/09/2017: 2 Days Prog + 1, Veruno (festival)
BE, 26/10/2017: Casino, Sint-Niklaas
BE, 29/10/2017: Botanique, Brussels
BE, 17/04/2018: Reflektor, Liège
NL, 20/04/2018: 013, Tilburg (Roadburn)
NL, 08/12/2018: Doornroosje, Nijmegen
BE, 22/05/2019: Het Depot, Leuven
BE, 30/10/2021: Vooruit, Ghent (Desertfest)
BE, 25/05/2022: Entrepôt, Arlon
BE, 23/09/2022: Het Depot, Leuven
Different songs played: 98
Song played most often: Ship of Fools & The Cuckoo (7)
Song anticipated most: (as in 'not seen live yet'?) The Golden Core, W.B.A.T. and Gullible's Travails
Specials:
– Seeing them in the high north of Norway (Tromso) and interviewing them just before the show (interview was agreed on the day before, while I requested it 3 or 4 weeks earlier, hadn't heard anything from them or the management in-between, so the preparation was quite stressy)
– The entire Botanique (Brussels) concert in 2017 (Un chien d'espace! The wheel! A pacific sonata! Here be monsters! Ship of fools! Vortex surfer! And a couple more…)
– Feedtime – Utrecht 2017
– Not having any memory of the Krach am Bach show in 2017 (was I there?)
– Seeing my girlfriend being in a total trance and state of 'disbelief' at the Nijmegen show in 2018 (her first MP gig)
– Driving 1000 km for the (free!) 2 Days Prog + 1 festival where they played in 2017
– A crowd of around 40 people in Arlon this week, the smallest audience I've ever experienced at a MP show
2h45 show, enjoyed it a lot. My neck will testify. The Starhammer jam was mental. I think Bent and Snah's voices were in great shape.
Sweet Jesus, almost 3,5 hours! I am hoping they're not too dead now for the Arlon show tonight (final show of the tour!). The only one I was able to witness during this tour. What an insane beast of a setlist…
If anyone wants to meet up at the venue tonight, I'll be wearing a white YOB or Cult of Luna shirt, haven't decided yet hehe.
@johnny I'll be in Arlon with a friend. An almost 4-hour train ride from Ghent haha! It's a working day and I'll spend half of it on a train crossing my entire country. Doesn't even sound that bad
Maybe in that week between 11 and 18 May they've planned a couple of days of recording in that French studio they've been to earlier? Potential Italian tour dates left aside…
Wow I used to go skiing there all my life until I was like 20! Never knew about this. Rocklette haha, great name! More like a concert series, from 6 to 14 August. What a crazy line-up… MP, Orange Goblin, King Buffalo, King Gizzard & TLW, All Them Witches, Greenleaf, Wo Fat, Minami Deutsch, Graveyard, Valley of the Sun, Ty Segall,… Jesus
Just say hi, I’ll be the dude with the black T-shirt and beard ;-)