WHITE WILLOW'S "TERMINAL TWLIGHT" STREAMING IN FULL ON AOL MUSIC
NEW ALBUM OUT TOMORROW OCTOBER 11th ON LASER'S EDGE
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Norwegian prog rockers WHITE WILLOW have returned with "Terminal Twilight", the band's sixth album. It is both a departure and a continuation in terms of WHITE WILLOW's
discography. The renewed emphasis on acoustic guitars and pastoral
sections, the somewhat gothic, mysterious atmosphere, are all hallmarks
of a sort of a "classic" WHITE WILLOW sound. On the other hand,
there is an added element of experimentation and playfulness, and a more
daring approach to harmonics that takes the band several leaps forward.
"Terminal Twilight" is streaming in its entirety courtesy of AOL Music and their full album listening party series. Get a first listen at: http://music.aol.com/new-releases-full-cds#/27
For the first time WHITE WILLOW
has chosen to abandon the high cost/hi gloss environment of the
professional studio in favor of their own attic. The album was recorded
with minimal, often primitive equipment and has been mixed with very
little in the way of processing and editing. The result is a raw, real
and almost live-sounding album, warts-and-all - well, relative to the
band's meticulously polished last three albums, anyway.
Musically the album has the advantage of having the strongest line-up the band has ever seen. Änglagård/Pineforest Crunch drummer Mattias Olsson returns for the first time since 1998's "Ex Tenebris" and delivers some of his best drumming to date. Newcomer Ellen Andrea Wang, known from Norway's avant-rock ensemble SynKoke, anchors the album with driving, sometimes angular bass lines. And Sylvia Skjellestad (nee Erichsen) returns after a one-album hiatus with a voice that really has become THE voice of WHITE WILLOW. Musical ideologists Jacob Holm-Lupo and Lars Fredrik Frøislie (Wobbler)
provide their trademark sounds, the latter in the shape of avalanches
of analogue keys - there is hardly a 70's keyboard that is not seeing
some action on the album, and the former with aching leads and wistful
acoustic fingerpicking. Ketil Einarsen, another WILLOW old-timer and known for his tenures with Jaga Jazzist and Motorpsycho, is ever the flute virtuoso.
The songs, as they often do in WHITE WILLOW,
straddle the lines between 'tron-drenched retro prog, gothic folk, art
pop and excursions into more harmonically adventurous territories -
maybe with slightly more emphasis on the latter than on previous albums.
WHITE WILLOW
has, since the release of their now-legendary debut album "Ignis
Fatuus" in 1995, had the highest international profile of any Norwegian
prog band. The band has played all the major prog festivals, topped
annual year's best polls with most of their releases, and sold more
albums than any other Norwegian band in the genre. As a part of the
much-touted "Third Wave" of progressive rock, alongside the Swedish
bands Änglagård and Anekdoten, the band helped spearhead a rebirth of
sorts of European art-rock.
"Terminal Twilight" Track Listing
1) Hawks Circle
2) Snowswept
3) Kansas Regrets
4) Red Leaves
5) Floor 67
6) Natasha
7) Searise
8) A Rumor of Twilight
9) The Howling Wind
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