28/10/2018: Office Takeover

The wind whistles outside, inaudible behind double-glazed windows. I kick back and gaze at the screen and two million little lights shine back at me. This weekend, Elephant Towers is all but deserted, with the Grand Elephant off on a trip. The only sounds are the ticking of the orange clocks, my jovial, sanguine hums as I wash the dishes, and the cat's protestations that this isn't enough food, human.

... I wish.

All is not well. Yesterday, my computer picked up a nasty Trojan horse that turned my screen into a delightful but useless Rube Goldberg machine of error messages. I'm having to reformat my hard drive to get the damn thing working again. Worse, it was mid-backup, and the syncage wasn't quite finished, so some of my data may well be corrupted even there. The brackish white water of the pond outside is attracting some unseasonably late mosquitoes, and the quiet keeps being interrupted by next door's dog, Valdez - a schnauser, but you wouldn't think it from the way he squeals like a great big hog - and by some guy revving his car out front, a custom job with a ton o' chrome.

I need to get out of the house. Not like my PC's moving any time soon. And, what the hell, I could use a paradigm shift.

I put down the Argos catalogue I've been idly leafing through and step out for a walk. It's brisk outside - temperatures in London aren't forecast to hit single figures - but I've long been blessed with the gift of cold resistance,

I miss the Grand Elephant, in whatever far meadow he's off to. I know he'll be back soon, but we are kin, and the household hasn't been the same without him. As his representative online, though, I have to hold the line in the meantime, stand under the banner and make sure I'm one of the fierce as opposed to the dead.

It's a dark and dangerous vigil at times. Dark powers wait at the edges of my perception, ready to walk, crawl, or even flow into our reality at the slightest hint of weakness (or failure to release interesting new music with creativity and heart). They whisper in their mother tongue, asking me why I'm being so bloody weird this week, what's happened to the completely serious Trunk that probably existed at some point.

I look back at them and it's like staring into a fractal mirror.

"Because," I say, "I felt like trying to squeeze as many band names as possible into 500 words of prose, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

They hiss and contort in shock and fear. "How many did you get?"

"23, I think." I smirk. "And I wonder if you can spot them all."

"You've a tricksy spirit", snarls their leader, a coiling mass with a face made of rocks: nine stones, close and jostling for position.

"Maybe so," I retort, "but that's 25 now."

Status Update

See above.

Review Roundup

Jerry Lucky likes Now We Have Power! In fact, he "urge(s) you to check them (Sanguine Hum) out."

Two more strong reviews en Francais this week: one for Now We Have Power and one for Old Town.

And yet more love for Now We Have Power comes from The Prog Report: "the type of progressive, thoughtful, inventive music that I think the world needs right now."

Last but by no means least, the hardworking folks at DPRP have given Arms Open Wide an 8.5!

21/10/2018: All Hallows' Elephant 2018

We're coming up, ladies and gents, to the darkest, strangest time of the year. A time when all the spirits and spectres of the underworld rise up and roam the Earth, tracing unknowable patterns in the ether as they move, unseen but felt, through mortal headspace.

That's right, it's All Hallows' Elephant!

Wooooo!

All Hallows' Elephant is a festival of spooky music which is entirely legally distinct from a certain other celebration of spookiness coming up in just over a week. How does one celebrate All Hallows' Elephant, you ask? Why, with a carefully curated selection of BEM's very spookiest tracks, of course! And yes, some of these picks may seem a little left-field at first, but bear with me. I can explain. I think.

The Black Box Society

What better way could there be to kick off such a spooky episode than with something from Confound and Disturb? It's right there in the name, people. Rob Ramsay is a master of the unsettling and the uncanny, and all this talk of black boxes does absolutely nothing to reduce my pre-existing paranoia about sealed containers, black or otherwise.

Discord (Domestic Policies)

Ah, the scariest monster of them all... The News.

Don't let the major key and ostensible cheeriness deceive you. There's something thoroughly weird going on in the background of this song that stops you from relaxing. There are moments, especially towards the end, when that weirdness threatens to break through, but, like any good horror movie, the tension lies in not letting the monster surface fully, in building the anticipation of what lies beneath.

Even Then We're Scared

It would be absolutely criminal to leave Mr Slatter off this list. In Happy People, he sheds life on a distinctive fear of his own: fear of this strange phenomenon we laughingly call existence, of whatever the hell our place is in the world and how we're meant to cope with it. That, to me, is spookier than any ghost or goblin.

Save Me From The Rain

Konchordat's forceful, near-apocalyptic tone has wonderfully grim overtones of the dark and dangerous - granted, intimidating might be a better word for this than spooky, per se, but it still feels to me like it's in the spirit of All Hallows' Elephant. And the album cover of Rise to the Order evokes Pyramid Head, one of the best-known and scariest creatures in popular culture, so that's a point in its favour.

Bedhead

Now We Have Power is... it's, um... it's been spookily well-reviewed? Okay, look, I know these connections are getting a bit tenuous, but, honestly, you'd be amazed at how hard it can be to work to this theme even when you're working with all music, let alone when you're restricted to the releases of one smallish independent label. It was this or the Monster Mash. You don't want me to post the Monster Mash, do you?

Status Update

Summer is over, much as the weather will try to convince you otherwise. It's quiet here at Elephant Towers. No new releases on the immediate horizon for now; this is a time of rest and scheming for us. You're safe.

For now.

Wooooo.

Review Roundup

A trio of reviews for you this week: Echoes and Dust with a positively glowing review of Dial, neoprog.eu with an impressive five stars for Now We Have Power (and hopefully some fitting commentary, but my French is rather rusty), and DPRP imploring you to give Suite for Piano and Electronics a spin.

14/10/2018: War and Music

We opened preorders recently for The Great War, the sophomore album from industrial rock artist Saul Blease. To be released on November 11th, the centenary of the end of the titular war, it's an expansion on a previous project to produce one piece of music for each year of the war, with new material to form a full-length album.

World War I, arguably the first modern war and certainly one of the ugliest, claimed around forty million lives in a protracted, bloody stalemate, collapsed four empires, and laid the groundwork for an even larger, deadlier conflict two decades down the line. Yet it has served as the basis for a huge amount of popular media, including a surprising amount of music. From Sting to Metallica to Coldplay (no, really), the Great War has been the subject of songs in almost every conceivable genre and style.

But all this raises a pretty big question: how do you turn one of the most horrific episodes in human history, a four-year slogfest with no real long-term winners, into something people want to listen to?

I think about this question a lot. As the centenary of the war draws closer, there's been a notable uptick in media based on it, and, while I like to think you can make good media out of anything with enough creativity, World War I in particular strikes me as challenging. As I'm sure many of you did, I read All Quiet on the Western Front for school, and, while it was a powerful book, I wouldn't exactly call it entertaining. More recently, the game Battlefield 1, the confusingly-titled fifteenth installment in the series, dodged the question by focusing on lesser-known theatres of war, staying away from the trenches. Is it actually possible to turn the Western Front into something you can enjoy?

Yes. Absolutely.

The Great War uses its medium to its advantage. Industrial rock is the perfect genre for one of the first truly industrial conflicts: World War I involved mass production and mechanization on scales never seen before, and even the conflict itself was often described in mechanical terms, a vast, uncaring machine that swallowed up millions in the service of its purpose. So music as huge as this - deliberate and monolithic and best played very loud - really couldn't be more appropriate for the subject matter.

It doesn't neglect the human element, though. One of the main narratives surrounding the war is that of brave, heroic soldiers caught in the machinations of generals and politicians. On this album, the vocals play the part of these "lions led by donkeys", and Blease doubles down by keeping them almost trapped in the mix. They're often distorted or drowned out by the titanic drums and guitars, conveying the sense of, as the song titles would have it, 'Valiant Hearts' swallowed up by the 'War Machine'.

At points, though, individual moments of humanity take the spotlight. 'Angel of Mons' refers to the mythical appearance of angelic forces appearing to fight alongside the British during the Battle of Mons, but it's the penultimate track, 'Hellfighter', that really shines for me. The American 369th Infantry Regiment, popularly known as the Harlem Hellfighters, saw more action and suffered more casualties than any other American regiment, and were heavily decorated for bravery and tenacity in battle, and the song that honours them is just as gritty and desperate as it should be. As a primarily African-American unit, the Hellfighters had to deal with discrimination by their command staff as well as enemy action, and their valor even in the face of this adversity deserves an arrangement as powerful as this one.

I think it'd be fair to say that The Great War proves, to me, that World War I can inspire more emotions than existential despair (though there's nothing wrong with that once in a while). This album has it all: awe, fear, and even a little bit of hope.

Give it a try.

Status Update

Now We Have Power is out now on CD and as a digital download. Much praised by critics and fans alike, we highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

Elsewhere in our roster, Orange Clocks have released a live album, of all things: Tope's Sphere 2 in its entirety, as performed at Sonic Rock Solstice, plus a new song, all for the bargain price of whatever you like. Check it out here!

Review Roundup

Bit of a quickfire one this week, as we've had a lot of reviews recently:

Amplified Magazine reviews Close to Vapour and A Map in Fragments.

Classic Rock Society reviews Old Town (two parts there).

Popgruppen reviews Now We Have Power.

New Boots reviews Orange Clocks at Sonic Rock Solstice.

And Jacques Becker reviews Unidentified Dying Objects, which I believe is French for Unidentified Dying Objects.

30/9/2018: BEM In Charts

The Young Elephant, author of this fine column, started a new day job this week in his civilian identity, working with staggering amounts of data. On that note, we've prepared rather a special Trunk this week - BEM in charts!

We've come quite a way since 2013 and its two BEM releases! The figure for 2018 is, of course, a touch low because the year's not over yet.

There's a lot of variance in the length of a BEM release, from EPs (that's Minotaur down at the low end there) to epic double albums (Emmettronica messing with the scale at a hefty 29 tracks). This isn't the whole story of course - most of the tracks on these records aren't your typical three-minute pop songs!

BEM's BQ (Beard Quotient) is actually pretty low at the moment. These figures are, of course, subject to change, so you should not use this chart for serious research purposes. (And that's the only reason why.)

We run a very tight ship here at BEM, with zero tolerance for unapproved slacking. The operative word there being "unapproved".

I didn't want to include this one. Bem made me do it.

Status Update

Now We Have Power is less than two weeks away! Be sure to preorder to avoid disappointment (and to get hold of the preview track 'Speak To Us' right away).

Review Roundup

PROG Magazine had two lovely reviews for us this month - one of Now We Have Power, and one of Dial. As always, we'd encourage you to pick up the full issue if you can, but these reviews are worth a read regardless.

We close out today, though, with a very prestigious review indeed - a rare perfect ten from The Prog Mind, awarded (rightfully, of course) to Dial. "The only real danger with technology is that often, the music loses some of its soul. This is not the case with Dial." Damn right.

The Trunk 23/9/2018: From the Vaults - The News

Welcome back to From the Vaults, the semi-regular feature where we dive back into the BEM archives to revisit some of our oulder releases. This week, we're winding back the spools over two and a half years to February 2016, and to the second full album release from N.y.X. Do not adjust your set - it's The News.

This is a really nice album cover but I can't think of anything witty for this caption, so I'll 

N.y.X is an Italian experimental rock band, first conceived in Turin in the early 2000s and first heard on record in 2005 with their self-titled debut EP. Starting life as the multi-instrumentalist duo of Walter F. Nyx and Danilo A. Pannico, backed up by a healthy selection of guest performances on their 2009 album Down in Shadows, N.y.X took on a third full member, the ever-enigmatic Klod, to produce soundscapes for The News, and the guest sheet this time around is impressive, featuring both Adrian Belew and Trey Gunn (King Crimson (yes, that one)).

The News is a concept piece about, as the name might suggest, the news, and the chaotic, unsettling portrait it paints of our world, the strange light it casts on an already-strange reality. Each of the first five tracks is subtitled with a stage of one's morning routine - waking up, getting ready, and the newspaper read over breakfast to start the day properly. And what a start it is.



The News is an album of ups and downs - not in quality, we should stress, but in overall pace and tone. The interplay between intense rushes of sound and fury and lower-key moments of relative peace is by far the strongest feature of the album as a whole. The oscillation serves as an immensely compelling through line that reflects the ever-conflicting moods of news media - with so much information rushing in at us, how exactly are we meant to feel? Is the only reasonable reaction to laugh? I don't know, and N.y.X seem to revel in that uncertainty.

Composition-wise, the album's thick like a Sunday paper, with a heavy focus on soundscapes and atmosphere. It's full and rich without ever straying into extravagance or getting too cramped, and it's clear that the many, many elements of each song have all had thought and care put into their placement. The News can be a challenging listen at times, but it doesn't force you to respect it, instead almost daring you to. Go on, it says. You can take it. And you absolutely can.

The News was well-reviewed - both Shawn Dudley at Progradar and Phil Lively at The Progressive Aspect gave it strong writeups, with the latter proclaiming it "proper stuff" and noting that it will push you out of your comfort zone, but you should let it, if you can. Veteran Russian music journalist Dmitry M. Epstein even gave it five stars. "Such is our reality," he said. Strong words, but the music lives up to them.

The News is available from the BEM webstore. And now onto... the news. Eh? Eh?

I'll get my coat.

Status Update

Dial is out now! Shineback's triumphant second album is a masterwork of smart electronica, and we'd encourage you to check it out if you've somehow not done so yet.

Turning to the future, three weeks remain before the release of Now We Have Power - preorder now for a preview track download and for the earliest possible access to the new hotness.

Review Roundup

Two new reviews of Dial came staggering into Elephant Towers this week. Phil Lively's for The Progressive Aspect features a little snippet of interview with Simon Godfrey himself and some very spurious claims about the origins of our label, and is well worth a read. Jerry Lucky was also kind enough to cover the album, declaring it a set of "great tunes with catchy riffs and singalong parts that at the same time run all over the place with brilliant sounding dramatic Progressive Rock signature elements" - proof positive, we feel, of Godfrey's mastery of genre blending.

The Trunk 16/9/2018: Review Roundup Special

It's been a while since our last Review Roundup Special. Let's remedy that, shall we? It's a bit of a mixed grab bag this time, with a few releases both newer and older getting some attention, so it's high time we shed some light on them. We'll be grouping reviews by the album to which they apply, and in each case you can click on the album title to be whisked away to the Bandcamp page. Without further ado, bring on the reviews!

Argos - Unidentified Dying Objects

The Progressive Aspect - "The PR information describes them as 'maybe the most British-sounding progressive rock band to come out of Germany', and I think that is a spot on description... It has taken me a long time to write this review, partly due to my enjoyment of the album. When I play it I just become immersed in the sounds, forgetting that I should be taking notes!"

Jerry Lucky - "Overall there’s a nice blend of melodic lyrical lines mixed with extended instrumental passages moving songs emotionally one way or the other... I love the fact they include a variety of musical influences and execute them so well."

Echoes and Dust - "With the sounds soaring through the skies, Argos is taking the listener on a magic carpet ride from start to finish."

Profil (French) - "In short everything is there and everything is going very harmonious way to a gradual end... I am captivated, moved and never bored."

Eclectic Shadows (Greek) - "They are just interested in the composition and play for the song rather than for themselves... if you urgently need a prog dose to keep breathing, maybe this album is for you!"

Matt Baber - Suite for Piano and Electronics

Echoes and Dust - "Joy is wrought and wrangled from that wide, toothy grin and any sense of darkness or danger is swiftly doused in a shower of gleeful sounds. From the start to the finish, this work seeks out and finds jubilation in every potential sonic corner."

Mike Kershaw - Arms Open Wide

The Progressive Aspect - "Arms Open Wide is an album well worth investigating, filled with interesting sounds and intriguing lyrics, all played with great touch and skill."

PROG Magazine - "A marked leap forward that brims with artistic confidence... It's his most ambitious and complete work to date."

Eclectic Shadows (Greek) - "Mike has created a very interesting album, far from manners and replicas, with serious lyrics and really interesting progressive music, an album that progressive rock fans will have to check."

Shineback - Dial

Progradar (?) - "If you want rocky guitars, it’s here. If you want extended prog rock structures, you get them too. If you want synths and electronic drums you get those. Above all you get songs that really pay you back for multiple close listens... Is it good? I’m biased of course, but yes I think it’s fantastic."

Progressive Music Planet - "And once you’ve embraced Shineback, go and check out Valdez as well (also on Bad Elephant Music). This is how the poppier side of prog SHOULD sound."

The Trunk 26/8/2018: One Year of Trunkage

It has been three hundred and sixty-four days since the publication of the first ever edition of The Trunk. I think that's close enough to a year to call this the blog's first birthday.

Tempus fugit.

Pictured: me, feeling old.

When I first pitched The Trunk, it was little more than a pet project, something to keep me writing and hold me to some kind of schedule during the stressful final year of my degree. Since then, BEM has released fifteen new albums, I've graduated, and we've had some time to experiment a little with the format of this thing. While I'm overall pretty happy with where it's ended up, I do think The Trunk can be better. So this week, instead of looking back as we often do, I'd like to look forward and talk about some of what we're hoping to bring to this blog in the weeks and months to come.

More Interviews

Thus far, The Trunk has interviewed Matt Stevens of The Fierce and the Dead, Louis Smith of Mothertongue, David Elephant, CEO, and, um, itself. These pieces are, unsurprisingly, some of our most-viewed content - they're exclusive insights into the creative process, and they're always fun to conduct and publish. They're also the sort of thing we really couldn't publish on the Facebook page alone, so they represent The Trunk at its best and most useful.

I think it's only reasonable that we do a few more. Now that I'm out of university, I have a lot more free time and brainspace to dedicate to preparing questions and planning interviews in advance, which was always the main obstruction to getting them done. We've got some new material in the works which is definitely worth talking about, but nobody can do that better than the artists behind it.

More Participation

The recent Talking Point posts have been unexpectedly successful - we knew we'd get a few responses, but we've generated some genuinely interesting discussions, and it's great to see our audience pitching in and having their say. So we'd like to do a little bit more of that.

We're still experimenting with what works and what doesn't for this - our survey didn't get many responses at all, but opening a more freeform discussion went a lot better, so that's what we're going to stick to going forward. Talking Points will continue as a semi-regular feature, probably a little less regular than From the Vaults (which will keep going strong until we run out of albums to cover, which, at the rate we're putting them out, seems unlikely to happen anytime soon), but we're also looking into a few new kinds of content. Stay tuned!

A New Look

The Trunk doesn't look half bad at the moment, but I still can't help but feel that something's missing. We don't have the logo, we don't really have any graphics at all, and the whole thing just feels a little bit spartan. With that in mind, we're hoping to jazz it up a bit soon. I have a redesign planned which will keep the fairly minimal aesthetic we have at the moment but hopefully bring a splash of Bad Elephant verve too, and I'm going to stop talking now before I spontaneously turn into a wedding planner or something.

I can also tell you that I'm doing a little bit of work on the Facebook page too... keep an eye out for that when it arrives.

And... that's about it. Here's to another year of Trunk action!

Status Update

Dial, now fully tracklisted and including a preview track in 'Consider Her Ways', will be released in just under three weeks. Get yer preorders in now.