FEATURED CD - Ten Jinn : As On A Darkling Plain

[Duncan Glenday]

Per ProgArchives:

The progressive symphonic rock band TEN JINN was founded in 1991. Their second album, partly influenced by the Anne Rice's vampire books "The Vampire Lestat" and "Queen of the Damned", is released on the Swedish label Record Heaven. Their complex music is a mixture of GENESIS, GENTLE GIANT, GLASS HAMMER, JETHRO TULL,QUEEN, SAGA and SPOCK'S BEARD, with a powerful singer, backed up by excellent backing vocals. The ex-HAPPY THE MAN guitarist Stan Whitaker is doing a guest appearance. The album has strong melodies, an outstanding production with great dynamics, skilful song writing and many instrumental passages. The highlights are the 40-minute title track "As On A Darkling Plain" and "I can't see". This could be a future classic. Highly recommended!

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=1321

[the winter tree]

What happened to these guys? They made a pretty big impression in the prog world then kind of vanished.

[Progbear]

Stan Whitaker (of HTM) was playing with them when I met him (Baja Prog ’99). I have a pre-release demo cassette of theirs with some of the tracks from this album. Don’t remember much about it. They were pretty good without bowling me over, as I recall.

[Rarebird]

Some less favorable reviews on Progarchives as well.

I only have Wildman.

[interbellum]

I bought this one especially because Stan played on it and must say I was not disappointed.

Frank Wyatt posted a video which showed the band and Stan playing two Happy The Man-tracks live: http://craftyhands.net/page/3/

[arabicadabra]

Guitarist Michael Matier is still in fine form with Heliopolis AND Box Of Shamans....

[ThomasKDye]

Dang, this sounds really good, and it also, from the comments here, sounds like an album that the artist in question has basically abandoned (somewhat like Under the Sun). It's tricky to discover something new that's become an Artistic Ghost Town.

[SteveSly]

Stan Whittikar played his last live show with them at ProgDay back in 1999. I think they put out one album after that if I remember right. John Strauss was at ROSfest last year as he was sitting behind the progression vending table and I talked to him briefly.

[Paulrus]

Yeah, these guys were An Item for about 2-3 years, partly cuz Stan was playing with them but also due to the strength of the material. They sort of happened and then vanished. Glad to hear at least some of them are still banging about...

[Digital_Man]

They had albums in 97, 99 and 03. I suppose their peak was from around 99-00 though.

I had this on cd back when. I think I bought it at Nearfest 2000. I really liked the song "dance of les innocence" which sounded very Queenish to me. I believe it was the opening track too. There were some other good moments on the album but over all I think it falls just short of being a classic. Still, a pretty good album for the times but maybe it hasn't worn so well and they were probably overshadowed by other bands at the time such as Discipline(who's album I never bought for some reason even though it was a big deal around the same time). Anyway, this is one of those albums I need to pick up again at some point.

[JB Horwitz]

I played Ten Jinn on The PM Show that aired 12/17/15. Sorry it's not still up.

[interbellum]

Just noticed the band released an album called Sisyphus in 2018:



https://tenjinn.bandcamp.com/album/sisyphus

The fourth release by Ten Jinn, Sisyphus, is an eight-part programmatic work that tells the story of the founder and king of Corinth after whom it is named. Because of affronts to the gods, while alive, Sisyphus was condemned in death to spend eternity in Hades rolling a boulder to the top of a mountain, only to have it roll back down each time he completed the task.

Originally written by John Paul Strauss as a classical work (a symphonic poem for string orchestra and piano) the Ten Jinn production involved a reworking of the piece to include rock instrumentation along with the classical components.

Sisyphus is a stunning and well-crafted fusion of classical orchestration and rock instrumentation, melodically satisfying with subtle, colorful shifts, as well as sudden dynamic changes sure to hold the listener’s attention. In a genre, all its own, (the album features both instrumental and vocal versions) will appeal to aficionados of rock and classical music alike.
credits
released May 5, 2018

John Paul Strauss: Lead and backing vocals, Keyboards
Mark Wickliffe: Drums, Bass & backing vocals
Ken Skoglund: Guitars & backing vocals
Mike Matier: Guitars

[interbellum]

Just in case some of us have missed this: Ten Jinn feat. Stan Whitaker playing two Happy The Man-tracks live in 1999 (so this was before the HtM-reunion):

[SteveSly]

I am pretty sure at least some of their ProgDay performance with Stan was filmed, but I have not been able to find anything on Youtube. It was the year the hurricane blew through and the performance was indoors at The Cats Cradle.

[Nearfest2]

Stan Whittikar played his last live show with them at ProgDay back in 1999.

That was the weekend Rob and I approached Stan and Frank about a Happy the Man reunion for NEARfest. We talked to them before the hurricane rolled in and chased us to the Cat's Cradle.

[Firth]

All nice, I’ve wanted to learn about Ten Jinn since I first recognized that Stan was in that band before the HTM reunion. Didn’t know about the Progday show in 99. Cool that HTM did a Nearfest show after that last Progday with Stan and Ten Jinn.

[Firth]

The links below which were posted in 2015, don’t work for me. I did however get a free Spotify account which is permitting me to listen.

[interbellum]

I once interview Frank and Stan about Baja:

What can you tell us about what happened in Mexico, where the seed was planted for the reunion?

Stan: I was playing with Ten Jinn at Bajaprog (a prog festival in Mexicali) in 1999 and word got out that I was from Happy the Man and after the set I was surrounded by about 100 musicians from all over the world telling me how great they thought HTM was and couldn’t believe they were meeting someone from HTM! I was floored and quite humbled. I found it hard to believe anyone even knew of HTM much less were influenced or inspired by us! Then two promoters from Nearfest (a progressive music festival in Pennsylvania) approached me and told me if I reformed Happy the Man with even one or two of the other original members we’d be headlining these festivals. I also found that hard to believe, but they sent me an offer in writing to headline Nearfest 2000 and I immediately called Frank and Rick who were also very surprised at the apparent interest in HTM and we decided to do it. So I moved from LA to Virginia to start writing music with Frank.

(the complete interview can be found here (in parts): https://htfo.proboards.com/thread/38...w-stan-frank-1)