Time for my yearly Flower Kings thread where we recap the last 12 months and speculate on what the new year will bring. And for the first time in the 4-5 years I've been doing these we actually have a new Flower King album to talk about!
So let's take the 2018 releases in the order they showed up in my mailbox - whether a project is "TFK related" or not follows my own special formula that makes sense in my head.
January:
Steve Hackett - Wuthering Nights: Live in Birmingham
Another in the live series of Hackett/Genesis live shows. Nick Beggs on bass here. I've enjoyed every one of these live cd/dvd/bd shows and this one is no different. Keep 'em coming Steve!
March:
Tangekanic - Hotelcantaffordit - (Andy Tillison, Jonas Reingold, Goran Edman, Luke Machin, Steve Roberts)
from the Slow Rust / Dot combined band tour. Wow is this great. This is live music as it should be - ALIVE. Yeah I wish it had Lalle on it so each band was at equal weight, but reality of touring is like this. Get this one if you still can.
June:
The Flower Kings - A Kingdom of Colours II (2004 - 2013)
A&E to Desolation Rose plus 3 bonus discs. The first two bonus discs held a few rare items. Nothing that hadn't been released before in some form but they make good listens and will be new to a lot of people. Some real gems in there (Kite, Buffalo Man, Last Exit, The Crown and the Cross, Jupiter Backwards) If you bought the first box set you of course need its companion.
Kalman Filter - Exo-Oceans
atmospheric electronica project from Andy Tillison, I like the creativity that went into the album back story. Three pieces , each one named after an exo-planetary ocean somewhere in Andy's universe. Two of the oceans are serene and unspoiled, but a threat from the civilization that dominates the third.
July:
The Sea Within - The Sea Within (Roine, Jonas, Daniel, Tom Brislin, Marco)
Is this a Flower Kings album? You could file it like that - I was very excited when Daniel joined TFK as a full member for A&E. Lots of great stuff on that album but in some ways it was a little bit of let down especially after UtF. So now we have another opportunity for Flower Kings music with Daniel singing and this one really did live up to the hype. Songs are very well crafted here making it more immediately accessible than most TFK stuff. Didn't take me long at all to warm up to this one. The only thing marring this album is that it has a really strange song sequencing order. The first disc isn't balanced well and then they tacked on 4 great songs as an afterthought extra disc when they could have easily fit on the main disc. So it sort of sounds like 3 separate EPs run together. But no big deal. I just re-sequenced the songs and made my own tracking order. Works much better now.
November:
Lalle Larsson Trio - Ashen Lights (Lalle, Jonas, Walle Wahlgren) 3/5 of Agents of Mercy here.
Lalle is such a unique player and this one doesn't disappoint. Fans of Corea, Holdsworth, contemporary classical, 70's fusion. This one has a more intimate and organic feel then the Weaveworld series. It's just the 3 of them with Lalle improvising over the top. At times I felt like I wandered into a dark smoky jazz club late at night. Cool feel and mood here.
Roine Stolt - The Flower King - Manifesto of An Alchemist (Roine, Hasse, Jonas, Michael, Nad, Marco, Zach, Max, Rob)
At last some official Flower King music! It is still early days with this one for me. I can say I like half of it alot. Tracks 4-9 ("High Road" to "Six Thirty Wake-Up") are excellent. This doesn't at all sound like the follow up to Desolation Rose. It almost seems like Proto-Flower Kings. Like it should slot between The Flower King and World of Adventures or even come before them all. Some of this has to do with Roine and Michael handling a lot of the bass. Throw in some Hydrophonia and a scoop of Wall Street Voodoo and you have Manifesto. A bit like an appetizer, it didn't quite fulfill my hunger for new Flower Kings.
The Tangent - Proxy
Lots of fans saying this is the best Tangent album yet. I'm still partial to Spark and Slow Rust from the recent ones but this one is very good. I did prefer the original version of "Suppers Off" to the remake here. But there isn't a bad Tangent album. We just have our favorites.
Other
Lalle Larsson guested on Chanan Hanspal's Only Two Things Are Infinite - with ex-Miles Davis alumni Bill Evans and Mike Stern and also played on Phi Yaan-Zek - Reality Is My Play Thing - Massive Triple CD also with Marco, Mike Keneally and Bryan Beller. - I haven't picked either of these up yet but plan to.
Marco Minnemann - I'm sure he did a ton of stuff as usual and now that he is part of the TFK family tree I should follow it all but I gotta draw the line somewhere! He is just involved in too many things for me to keep track of - I'm not the bondegezou of the Flower Kings!
Felix Lehrmann - I didn't see anything prog related - he is busy of course with live shows in Germany for many popular acts. Sarah Connor, Dieter Birr.
Zoltán Csörsz - His website said Zoltan`s debut solo album Escape from the Past will be released in 2018 - shows the cover art and everything. But I can't find this anywhere so I don't know if it really was. Anyone know anything? Other than that I think he is busy teaching and doing jazz gigs mostly with Jan Lundgren trio.
Erik Hammarström - with Änglagård and played on All Traps on Earth's debut album A Drop of Light - this is an Änglagård side project - I haven't heard this one yet.
Jaime Salazar - couldn't find any recordings or news.
Marcus Liliequist - nothing prog related but he is still active drumming in Sweden.
Live shows in 2018
TFK shows (Roine, Hasse, Jonas, Zach Kamins, Mirkko DeMaio)
Samla Mammas Manna - live shows with Hasse Bruniusson, Roine Stolt, Håkan Almkvist, and Rikard Sjöblom (these shows were in Sweden and sounded pretty cool - wish we could get a live disc from this formation)
Kaipa DC did a couple of shows
The Sea Within - one show
Neal and Roine performed together when Neal's solo tour came to Stockholm - Played the Whirlwind.
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