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Andy Tillison:
Parallels
by Tommy “Hashman” Hash

Tillison on guitar, taking a break from the synths

Rooted in the true sounds of progressive rock is The Tangent, a supergroup led by keyboardist/guitarist/singer-songwriter Andy Tillison the band has led the way within the genre with five studio and two live albums as well as a DVD, with each being different than the last, standing on it's own with intricate melodies, atmospheric soundscapes, and challenging arrangements. The latest Tangent record, Down and Out in PARIS and LONDON is no exception to musical mindset that has made Tillison and Co. who they are. But that's not the only record that he has unleashed upon the 'thinking man's rock' masses.

A reunion with his old friends Parallel or 90 Degrees prompted the release of the album Jitters - a heavier record, built upon edgy guitars and electronic beats, it's in complete contrast to the prog-rock that The Tangent beholds, taking a more modernized hard rock stance. Through a revolving lineup that has included members of The Flower Kings, 10cc, Jethro Tull, Van Der Graaf Generator, Manning, & Gong among others, the band has held tried and true to their formula - where this formula was brought to it's highest moniker with the release of 2008's Not as Good as the Book, an elaborate release that not only included two CDs worth of material, but a graphic novel/comic book with the deluxe edition - however when it came down to making the follow up, it wasn't about trying to outdo that record, Tillison simply wanted to make great music.

"Well it's a funny sequence of events really," begins Tillison, "I wanted the new album to be just about the music. I think we said that in the official press statement it was about making an album that features the best of what we do, kind of more like a Yes album, say Close to the Edge - so it was simply more like a band getting together and making a record rather than doing a huge elaborate thing. I think that this was something I wanted to do, because you look at the past history of things, and when you get into a big wave of making concept records, there is a danger there, everybody expects the next concept to be bigger, better, and more bold than the last one. If you look back at Rick Wakeman's career - look at what he did with The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which was his first statement on that way - and then he does Journey to the Center of the Earth, which was even bigger with an orchestra, and by the time he reached the next one there was a choir on it or something like that - so there was a danger in 'what could he possibly do next,' it almost became a problem for Rick - he then would go back and do something more basic. I decided with the band, to go back to basics after the big concept record to make sure people didn't expect The Tangent to be the band who would do the mega concept every few years. It's still predominately about making good progressive rock music, that's what The Tangent is all about."

The band this time around is set up this time with Tillison, acoustic guitarist/vocalist Guy Manning, woodwind player Theo Travis, bassist Jonathan Barrett, and drummer Paul Burgess - all being English musicians. There were plans to collaborate with fellow Inside Out recording artists Beardfish on this album, but that fell through - regardless, the end result worked out, "It's something I guess that was just coming," explains Tillison on the lineup, "The Tangent started out as a 'one album' thing; myself, three members of The Flower Kings, and David Jackson at the time - we did that and we didn't plan on becoming a band at the time to continue to make records. The thing was, is that people liked it and we decided to carry on with it, one by one over the years members have changed, drifted away or decided to leave; whatever happened, eventually The Tangent became a band of it own and the actual music became the most important thing about the band, regardless of who was in it. Once we had actually achieved that, the band was able to become more practical - actually have people that live in the same country to get together to rehearse & record without the enormous amount of hassle and logistics that have to do with moving The Tangent around two or there countries at the same time. Down and Out in PARIS and LONDON was originally going to be a record with Myself, Guy, & Theo with Beardfish, but the problems became too big, again the logistics - Beardfish are miles away in the north of Sweden, we are over here in England, they had a tour coming up at the time which got cancelled, but we didn't know it was going to be cancelled at the time we were trying to make the record - and just some English guys I know became available, so that's what we decided to do was to just get on with it and make the record."

The lyrics hit home in a more personal matter on the new album, one of the tunes that is highly realistic is "Paroxetine - 20mg," - one of the first tracks to be written for the album, it set the tone for the all the tunes that would make up Down and Out in PARIS and LONDON, ""Paroxetine - 20mg" is about the drug that takes you into a comfortable world. If you can imagine in your emotional life you have high and lows in what you are trying to do, trying to smooth out the lows and not feel as low as you did - but it also smoothes out the highs. And you find yourself always on a slightly grade A, not particularly rainy or sunny - not exactly standard prog-rock lyrics but that's what The Tangent is all about, not standard prog lyrics. That was one of the first ones to actually get completed for this record as a song and it has a sort of 'nighttime' feel to it; late night in Paris, late night in Manhattan feel to it - and that's something I decided to try to make work for the rest of the album, the way the sleeve has these nighttime scenes in the city - it hinted of that kind of thing, I think that that is where the record kind of went down that nighttime trail."

And with that record comes one with Parallel or 90 Degrees, which stands on it's own. Jitters is the first from them in years and the reunion has been proof positive as Tillison explains the whole process of getting back together, "This was all to do with my move back from France to England - I'd been in France for a long time, I went over there to live in 2004 and I went through a whole load of drastic life changes, deciding to become a professional musician after a very long time and to make The Tangent the main thing that I wanted to do with my life. During that time it was impossible to work with PO90, because PO90 up until that point hadn't ever been a commercially viable group, we hardly sold any record compared to what The Tangent sold. Obviously, I had to focus my time and energy on The Tangent over there in France. Then everything got screwed up in France and I ended not knowing quite where I lived - moving between France and England, sleeping on various friend's floors. So I came back to England, did the gig with Beardfish at the Summer's End festival in the UK, I met a wonderful lady whom I'm going to get married to, and basically set up my life again here in England. I suddenly realized I was just a few miles up the road from PO90, the really great thing is that those guys are actually still playing together after all that time (drummer) Alex King and (guitarist) Dan Watts carried on being their own band together and they have this bass player named Matt Clark and I called them up and said "fancy doing anything" and they said "Yes, let's do it again," so we got back together as Parallel or 90 Degrees as if nothing happened and there we went. It was great to get back together again, we just did two gigs together which we really enjoyed playing, and we spent some time making the new record together this year. It's nothing like The Tangent, PO90 before Jitters was like a frustrated modern rock band with a prog band trying to burst out from the inside - but now with Jitters it's more like a modern rock band. Obviously there is a prog element in it, but it's mainly guitar driven instead of being keyboard driven. I wrote all the songs for it on guitar, except for two of them in which the guitar is wrote on keyboards, if that's not confusing enough. It was just great fun to get back together again, we are still great friends, we got a lot of experience together and that is something that always has been missing from The Tangent - is not the friendship element. It's not a question of disliking or anything like that, it's just the fact that everybody lived sop far away we couldn't actually become just colleges - we were never able to spend very much time together to get the group vibe like Parallel or 90 Degrees has."

Parallel or 90 Degrees - Tillison, second from right

So two corresponding releases are out now, obviously in contrast from each other - regardless, the process of making both records around the same time went smoothly, "It was kind of easy really, there is a kind of crossover point, now and then there is a song that comes up and you think, which band could this one be for," says Tillison, "Usually they are sufficiently different to know which one belongs in which band - this one is a PO90 song and this one would be a Tangent song. A lot of it comes the fact that if (the writing phase) starts on the guitar, it is a Parallel or 90 Degrees song - but that's 'in general' because quite a few songs on Not as Good as the Book started on guitar, but there wasn't a Parallel or 90 Degrees at that point anyway. I think musically that there are some parts of Not as Good as the Book that you won't find on Down and Out in Paris and London because those type of musical elements were diverted to the PO90 project and so the track "Paroxotine" could have been on a PO90 album if it wanted to be and the title track from Jitters could have been a Tangent song. In the end "Jitters" was approached in a PO90 way and "Paroxotine" was approached in a Tangent way - "Paroxotine" has this sort of 'rock song' in it, but it also has all of these jazz improvisations and themes - if it would have been a PO90 song it would have been shorter and more to the point, whereas it has been 'Tangentized.'"

A tour with both bands on the bill would certainly be a great gig to experience, there has been talk of it, but with hard times in the record business and the word economy, nothing is in stone at this point, "We obviously want to do this and we obviously want to play live, and yes, we have discussed the idea of how we can bring the two bands together" states Tillison, "At the moment there is nothing planned, as we all know, times are hard. We can only assort to do tours if they are centered around a couple of key festivals that we can get on and then be able to play some more gigs at the same time. The festivals at the moment not booking bands the same way they used to be, it's kind of difficult to get on at this point. Being our kind of positioning in the great positioning of things - it's funny because, The Tangent are at a fairly reasonably high point in the tree as far a being well known and we are one of the band's that people expect to see in top few bands of the festival; but some of the festivals are tending to go for booking 1970's legend, rather than say a Flower Kings or Spock's Beard, they want to have a band that is a legend from the 70's. And their thinking 'right, that's going to cost us this and that amount of money, can we afford to have The Tangent,' I think that sometimes we are getting left out because we are at that level, but if we can get it all sorted out, we would very much like to get this though and push forward on go on with it. PO90 will certainly do some gigs around England and if we can get some good shows together we would like to take The Tangent too."

There are no guest appearances that Tillison speaks about for future endeavors, but he does hint at something that has been a long time coming, "An album that should have happened that has never happened is an album between me and Guy to write an album together. At the moment, it's always been a case of Guy writes his music for the Manning band and I write my music for The Tangent or PO90. Guy and I write quite well together and I am currently trying to persuade him to make a record with me, just to two of us. It's already started, perhaps we will have something to tell you about that around Easter of next year. We sometimes write under the name of La Voce Del Vento, so it might be released under that name."

With the two new albums out, Tillison does plan on making more music with The Tangent and doing it on the band's own terms - and in the world of prog, we all know that expectations are high and different each time a band makes an album - but no matter what direction a band goes into, there is always acceptance abroad. "Tangent wise, I will definitely make another one - I intend to keep on making them as long as people want to listen to them. We do want to push ahead and use different sounds and approaches to making music as we go along," concludes Tillison, "We have to think about the people who go out and buy our music, they are the most important people and what we want to do is give them twenty minutes of what they want and then we like to say OK, that was that, we want to move on and give you something different. I ask to ask myself, what do people want in progressive rock - it's the name, it's the only type of music that has this manifesto of as part of the title - I think that when bands in progressive rock make music, it's doesn't have to be a progression from one album to another, it's the music itself that progresses from one thing to another - one theme into another, then comes back with a different song but with a theme from the first song played over the top of it with a flute and it all comes back intertwined with a jam - that is the music progressing, not the actual band and that's the music we play and we reserve the right to make a record that uses that style. I feel that the same people that say that a band hasn't moved on are the same people that if, we had turned around and sounded like Muse or Radiohead this time, they probably say, we would have preferred the early stuff. You can never really win with progressive rock music - we are an intensely fussy bunch, all of us really. All of us expect to be unbelievably good and we all expect the new album to be better than the last one - it's not like that, it's about the story; very band has a story to tell, whether it's The Flower Kings, Yes, ELP or whoever - they all have a story and you look back over the story a few years from now and say, "yeah they were good." The progressive rock community are good people and they are very supportive."

Copyright & Publishing: 2009 Tommy Hash for Ytsejam.com

CLICK HERE to Read a Review of Down and Out in Paris and London.
CLICK HERE to Read a Review of Not as Good as the Book.
CLICK HERE to Read a Review of A Place in the Queue.

Please Visit:
The Tangent Website
The Tangent at MySpace
PO90 Website
PO90 at MySpace
Inside Out Music
Inside Out Music at MySpace
Century Media Records

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Andy Tillison: Parallels by Tommy “Hashman” Hash

Andy Tillison:
Parallels
by Tommy “Hashman” Hash