What is CTP?

Colin Tench Project

On September 30th of this year, Colin Tench released his long-awaited solo project album “Hair in a G-String (unfinished but sweet)”. I call it a solo project because he usually plays in a band called Corvus Stone where everyone contributes to the music creation; all four members come up with their own bits. Colin has played lead guitar on a few other album’s like “The Road to Avalon” by Blake Carpenter’s Minstrel’s Ghost, “The Road to Mingulay” by Andy John Bradford’s Ocean’s 5, and most recently on “Bridge Across Time” by Steve Gresswell’s Coalition (with Blake Carpenter). But this “Hair in a G-String” is a Colin Tench album, with all the music and much of the lyrics created by him.

No. Not quite. Let me correct that. The music was created by Mr. Tench but a rather lengthy list of people (25 I counted including Colin) contributed with some of them building on the music that was created while others – namely Phil Naro and Peter Jones – contributed lyrics to some tracks.

CTP for short (and not to be confused with the Christian Tolle Project) has culminated in an album that can best be described as entertaining and enjoyable. The music is varied and wonderfully composed, performed, and produced. Some of the lyrics are very clever and beautiful while others are quite amusing. It’s an album of progressive music but not in an exceptionally technical way nor in a grandiose fashion. It’s an album of melodic rock in a manner reminiscent of the classic days when melodic rock was a pop radio staple. Though the primary influences would seem to be Genesis, Queen, ELO, and even Santana, one can pick out some Pink Floyd and even a touch of Iron Maiden, plus as many other artists are you care to find. Rumours of both Sir George Martin and Spike Milligan being channeled on this album add to the intrigue. It’s an album of serious music (mostly) not to be taken too seriously (mostly).

The stories behind this album’s creation are interesting. It began way back around 2010/11. Colin had played in a band called BunChakeze (say bunch-of-keys) in the 80’s and they had recorded an album’s worth of material that was never released. After a 25-year hiatus from guitar playing, Colin got in touch with Pasi Koivu, a keyboard player and composer in Finland. Pasi recommended releasing the BunChakeze album. Around this time, Colin decided to pick up a guitar and see if he could still come up with something. What resulted was an instrumental piece that was comprised of some material from BunChakeze, some new ideas, and a little bit of stuff borrowed from elsewhere. The final composition was entitled, “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Screwed”. Shortly after, Pasi asked Colin to play guitar for a piece he was working on called, “Iron Pillows”. This collaboration was the beginning of Corvus Stone. The guitar instrumental was the beginning of CTP.

Colin became very occupied with chatrooms and through these he came in contact with several people who would become instrumental in his sudden and rapid career development: Sonia Mota (artist), Blake Carpenter (singer), Steve Gresswell (multi-instrumentalist and composer), Stef Flaming (multi-instrumentalist and composer and singer for Murky Red), Andres Guazzelli (composer), Andy John Bradford (folk singer and composer), Oliver Rusing (multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer) and several others too. From 2011 to 2015, Colin would not only go on to release two Corvus Stone albums and one album of remixed tracks and new tracks, but he would appear on a few other albums playing lead guitar and guest on a few more like KariBow’s “Holophinium”, United Progressive Fraternity’s “Fall in Love with the World”, Marco Ragni’s “Land of Blue Echoes”, and Grandval’s “A ciel ouvert”. During all of this, Colin had let singer Phil Naro (who appears on a few Corvus Stone songs) hear “Something Old…” and he took part of the track and recorded vocals with his own lyrics. This became the basis for “Can’t Have It Any Other Way”, the second track on “Hair in a G-String”.

After Corvus Stone “Unscrewed”, Colin decided to work on his solo project in earnest. “The Mad Yeti” was a demo that he had created earlier after buying a microphone called Yeti. This along with other working demos were available on Melodic Revolution Records’ web site. Colin picked up a piece he was working on called “Hair in a G-String” (a title inspired by “Air on a G-String”) and decided to see where he could take it. He also composed a piece called “The Sad Brazilian” which he put on YouTube. Meanwhile in Buffalo, U.S.A., Gordon Bennett, a fellow musician on the United Progressive Fraternity album, found Colin’s Brazilian and pilfered it. Gordo, a very talented guitarist in his own right, went ahead and added orchestral arrangements to the Brazilian and then sent the whole thing back to Colin with a “hope you don’t mind but…” type of a notice. Colin did not mind one bit. Gordo’s contribution had been to enhance the music rather than go over it. Colin was thrilled. Gordo was invited to join the project.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Steve Gresswell, who had provided orchestration for what was to become “Hair in a G-String part 1 (The Opening)”, was becoming busy with his latest recording project, Coalition’s new album “Bridge Across Time”. Gordo was put in charge of most of the rest of the orchestration to appear on the album. Other important names to appear were Phil Naro (vocals and lyrics on two tracks), Vic Tassone (drummer for Unified Past), Oliver Rusing on drums (Oliver commented that he was given the music and with no click track, he had to add his drums and percussion), Ian Beabout on flute for “Lisa’s Entrance Unplugged”, drummer Jay Theodore McGurrin, Petri Lindstrom on bass (Corvus Stone, Saturn Twilight, Progeland, Petri Lindstrom Project, etc.) and a host of others. The biggest addition to the album however had to be Peter Jones of Tiger Moth Tales and Red Bazar.

Peter Jones not only brought his talents as a vocalist and a multi-instrumentalist (he plays a clarinet and a saxophone solo on the album) but also as an improvisational mad man. Though Colin’s lyrics were at times zany enough, Peter was free to interpret them as he liked and add things when he felt inspired to do so. Thus we get the lines, “Put them together and what do you get?/ Goodety goodety good!” Peter also contributes a minion vocal break near the end.

Peter’s serious side can be heard on the first single, “And So Today”. He sings with passion and sentiment on this song about the passing of some of our musical heroes in this past year. It’s a beautiful and touching song.

The album became available on CD in early November and there are plans for a vinyl release of the “Hair in a G-String” parts, “The Sad Brazilian”, and “And So Today”. There is also a bonus track with the download that will not be on the CD and that is Gordo’s orchestral work on “Lisa’s Waltz with full orchestra”, a phenomenal piece on its own.

Currently ranking on the top of several prog lists including CD Baby and Prog Archives, the album received a favourable review in Prog Magazine as well. Colin will be the first to tell you though that this was indeed a band effort. Every single contribution helped make this album the success that it is.

The Tench Connection

In the summer of this year, Corvus Stone received a wave of praise from critics and also reviewers on Prog Archives for their download only release, Corvus Stone Unscrewed. The album was made available for free to people who had previously purchased the band’s albums (Corvus Stone, Corvus Stone II) and it included a menu of remixed songs and new material. Corvus Stone had already attracted much attention for their 2012 debut and won even more fans with last year’s sophomore album.

A multi-national band, Corvus Stone is comprised of Colin Tench – guitars, Pasi Koivu – keyboards, Petri “Lemmy” Lindstrom – bass, and Robert Wolff – drums and percussion, and is based in Sweden. Each member has his background and involvement with projects past and present, but of the four, one member’s history stands out as rather unexpected for a recording musician, one who jests that he’s not a professional even though he bloody well works like one.

The Long Road to London

Colin Tench had been an avid listener to music since a very young age; however, the thought of becoming a professional musician was not something he dwelled on with any degree of seriousness. Originally from England, Colin went to live in Sydney for three years and spent 11 months backpacking across Asia. During his stay in Sydney he began learning to play the guitar. He joined a band alongside some other blokes who were either from England or who had English parents, and they called themselves The Pommie Gentlemen. This humorous appellation would presage Colin’s approach to music in the distant future. The band played parties and joined Battle of the Bands, but by Colin’s own admission they were not particularly good. (An interesting footnote is that the drummer ended up playing on two tracks of Corvus Stone’s debut three decades later!) His band did, however, discover AC/DC’s original vocalist, Bon Scott in the audience one night.

Eventually, Colin made his way back to London via a six and a half month journey across Asia. The guitar was temporarily forgotten until Colin decided to audition for a new band called Odin of London. Both he and another guitarist, John Culley, passed the audition. It was only after the band got going that Culley revealed to the other members that he had been a member of Black Widow and Cressida – a professional with some serious seventies cred. Thus Odin was born there in London in 1981.

Odin of London performed in pubs but gradually grew tired of playing for small audiences. They hoped that by recording some of their material they might release a record and move up to bigger crowds. Unfortunately for them, every record company door they entered became a swift exit. The band folded, but not without three of the members putting their musical heads together to come up with a cunning plan for a new band project.

The end of Odin and the beginning of…

A Bunch of Keys

It was 1985 and Colin Tench, Gary Derrick and Cliff Deighton decided to put together an album of songs that would have absolutely no popularity whatsoever in the mid-eighties. With the discovery of the elusive fourth chord, they deigned to record an album of crossover prog (as those in the know might call it), something that they wanted to create for themselves – a notion that seems decades ahead of its time. Songs they could come up with, but money for studio time was another problem. A game of poker led the lads to the fortuitous encounter with a gentleman who was planning to build a recording studio. Before the evening was out, the three musicians had agreed to help build the studio in exchange for recording time (one wonders if any bets were lost). Thus began the music of Bun Chakeze and what was to be the seed from which would sprout the trunk bearing all of Colin’s musical projects 25 years later.

As the band’s music came together, lyrics were written for some songs. But who would sing them? At last, the band got a hold of a singer, Joey Lugassy, from California. The music had a strong progressive rock sway to it, and Joey did his best to deliver vocals for the songs. The resulting product was rather bold for the year of 1985 – a melange of styles including Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, and other classic sounds of the 70’s – but as one could expect, no record companies were interested. Bun Chakeze packed up their instruments, and Colin packed his travel bags and went off in search of adventure in foreign lands… for 24 years!

The album that would change the world!

Chance Encounters

In 2010, Colin came in to roost and had John Culley on his mind (remember him from Odin of London?). They had been out of touch since 1985, and Colin decided to search for him on the Internet. As Culley had once been a member of Black Widow, Colin tried to get a hold of the fellow in charge of running the Black Widow web site, Pasi Koivu (this guy is instrumental, so to speak). The contact between these two men led to some important things happening in Colin’s life. First, Pasi got to hear some of Colin’s recordings from the 80’s and encouraged him to release the music. Odin of London became available as a download only but BunChakeze was released on CD. Colin began connecting with musicians and other interesting people on Facebook and came in contact with several who liked what they heard. Among them were artist Sonia Mota, singer Blake Carpenter, and musicians Stef and Yolanda Flaming. Then Pasi asked Colin to contribute some guitar to a piece he was working on. And that was where it started.

Over the next two years, remarkable things began happening for Colin and he found himself hauled fret board first into the world of a professional musician. Between 2011 and 2012, Colin formed Corvus Stone with Pasi Koivu, Petri Lindstrom, and Robert Wolff with Sonia Mota contributing artwork and opinions, and Blake Carpenter doing a bit of vocals. They released their debut album in 2012. Colin was also asked to play guitar for Blake Carpenter’s band The Minstrel’s Ghost and his album “The Road to Avalon”. Colin became an integral part of Andy John Bradford’s Oceans 5 and helped create the music for and played guitar on the album “Return to Mingulay”. In addition, Colin re-formed BunChakeze and also began working with other musicians and singers on his own Colin Tench Project. And as if playing in bands was not enough, Colin learned about mixing and mastering and mixed and mastered the debut album “Time Doesn’t Matter” by Stef and Yolanda Flaming’s band Murky Red. Not bad for a guy who hadn’t played guitar since Culture Club was popular!

The Minstrel’s Ghost

Oceans 5

Corvus Stone II

Colin Tench Project

A Modern Minstrel

Over the last few years, Colin has found himself keeping very busy. Aside from recording Corvus Stone II and the special follow up “Unscrewed”, Colin has been working on a few other projects such as the bands Coalition and Transmission Rails. As well, CTP is coming together, soon to be ready to release a full first album. Colin also played guitar for Andres E. Guazzelli’s symphonic rock peace “Wish You Could Hear” and mixed Murky Red’s second album “No Pocus Without Hocus” and squeezed in some lead guitar on one track. Finally, the project United Progressive Fraternity featuring many musicians and including legends Jon Anderson and Steve Hackett, includes Colin and his music.

It’s hard to imagine a musician with more irons in the fire than Colin. In addition to playing guitar and writing music, Colin also mixes, something he learned to do after he was not happy with the engineer’s job on an Oceans 5 recording, and has learned web page design. Once there was a time when bands had money and hired people to do these things. Now Colin, along with support from his trusted musician friends in Murky Red and painter Sonia, does a lot of different things for maintaining his band projects.

Colin’s playing style is at once easily identifiable with Corvus Stone and impressively diverse in his other projects. Often playing staccato notes reminiscent of Ritchie Blackmore, Colin has a chameleonic ability to adapt his playing suitably to different styles of music. He can adopt an almost flamenco style to his playing and add folk influences or go with a seventies rock groove or switch to symphonic prog guitar. One has to wonder though, after not having played for a quarter century, how does he do it? Colin admits that it is not easy – fingers and memory don’t work like they used to – though he says he can avoid making the same mistakes he did in the 80’s. Some other important points are that:

– He doesn’t take himself seriously though he certainly takes playing and recording seriously.
– He tries to make the most out of each note because he doesn’t play that many in a minute.
– He believes that more than shredding, making a guitar solo work with the melody of the music makes for a good guitar solo.
– He thinks of how to add a different twist to his music, go the opposite way from what might be expected..
– He has fun playing.
– His band Corvus Stone don’t try to sound like anybody and they don’t try NOT to sound like anybody.

Connections

Colin Tench has worked regularly with quite a few people. Here are some.

Blake Carpenter – Colin plays guitar on the album The Road to Avalon by Blake Carpenter’s band project The Minstrel’s Ghost. Blake sings on the Corvus Stone albums and is part of the band project, Coalition.

Sonia Mota – The painter who provides Corvus Stone with stunning artwork, she is also an ideas person who came up with the name for the band. She did the artwork for Oceans 5 and for Progeland, a band that includes Corvus Stone bassist Petri Lindstrom.

Stef Flaming – Colin’s good friend, Stef is involved in Transmission Rails with Colin, played bass in Oceans 5, and appears on Corvus Stone’s cover of Murky Red’s song “Boots for Hire”. Stef is the song-writer, artist, and vocalist for Murky Red and plays guitar as well. Colin mixed and mastered both Murky Red albums and plays lead on one song.

Phil Naro – Phil can be heard singing on some Corvus Stone songs, contributed vocals to the Coalition band project and sings on some tracks of the Colin Tench Project. Phil’s career goes back to the eighties when he played in TALLAS with Billy Sheehan. He currently sings with Unified Past.

Andres Guazzelli – Andres wrote and arranged some of the music on the Oceans 5 album and wrote his own 12-minute symphonic prog piece called “Wish You Could Hear” with Colin playing guitar.

With several band projects on the go at once, it’s difficult to guess where Colin’s machine heads will turn up next. His most recently released appearances are on the forthcoming United Progressive Fraternity album and a CTP release for Christmas called, “Natal”.

In just a few short years, Colin Tench is branching tendril-like into the prog scene. It must be all thanks to him discovering that fourth chord!

Corvus Stone home page

 

 

 

 

 

The Pommie who? No, I don’t ever remember seeing them.

No Pocus without Hocus – A Review

Over the last decade or so, there has has been a revival in the heavy psychedelic acid rock scene with many new bands adding a modern and updated twist, creating a heavy stoner crunch with occasional aggressive leaps. Bands such as Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, Kadavar, Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell, and Demon Eye have taken the bridging elements between late sixties heavy psych and early seventies downer rock and recreated them in an up to date sound scope.

One band who have very successfully encapsulated that sound in their music,  enhancing it with an underlying flow of Pink Floydian tones and applying a progressive approach, is Belgium’s Murky Red. Their debut Time Doesn’t Matter was released in 2012 and has been described as Black Sabbath meets Pink Floyd. By the band’s own admission though, the first album didn’t truly capture the sound they were going for. Keyboardist Yolanda Flaming goes as far as to say three of the tracks are today not even fit to be called Murky Red music.

Their new album No Pocus without Hocus, released just recently as a digital download for now (CD to come once sales of the digital album reach the goal), sees the band developing their sound more in the intended direction with vocalist/guitarist Stef Flaming stating that the final track Elena is where the band has really managed to flesh out the direction of its sound.

The music on this 11-track offering is quite a treat for anyone who loves music as described in the opening paragraph. Wonderful modern day heavy psych guitars abound with heavy prog tendencies. The rhythm section provides a solid pounding when required with drummer René Marteaux doing an excellent job of driving the heaviness and aggressive edges home as well as appropriately handling the trippier and more melancholy parts with Marie Vancamp augmenting the percussion . However, unlike a lot of bands who concentrate on the heavy stoner side, Murky Red deliver lighter songs as well such as She’s Crying Diamonds, Bad Wolf of the Pack (a kind of Pink Floyd meets Planet Caravan and Green Grass and High Tides Forever number) and Wild Flower. In a way, the concept behind the name Iron Butterfly is quite suitable here with Murky Red showing their lighter Butterfly side against the heavy Iron side. It’s my impression though that the heavy side wins out with some excellent guitar riffs of the stoner rock variety showing up in Pixilated Friends, Stoned and Horny and Collateral Damage, as well as in many of the other tracks. You can also look forward to some note and mind bending guitar solos courtesy of Patrick Dujardin.

Special mention must go to Stef Flaming’s voice. Though he aspired not to be the band’s vocalist, his deep, almost Johnny-Cash-goes-ominous-elder-hippy quality suits the sound of the band just perfectly. Flaming guested as vocalist on Corvus Stone’s cover of Murky Red’s song Boots for Hire and in turn, Corvus Stone guitarist Colin Tench plays lead on this album’s track Collateral Damage. In fact, Tench was responsible for the mixing of both Murky Red albums, and I believe he’s done a stellar job of rendering their sound.

A review of this album album would not be complete with saying a few words about the lyrics. Though I honestly haven’t listened carefully to each song’s lyrics, the humorous and quirky ones do tend to stand out. “I smoked all my hashtags with some pixilated friends,” from Pixilated Friends is the first to have arrested my ears. As the amusingly titled Stoned and Horny floats through a spacey segment, Flaming utters, “For those who don’t understand this song, this is the stoned part, yeah”. “The trick is to get back to the horny,” he muses. A Wooden Groove begins as a song with lyrics but soon Flaming tells us that, “from now on, this song will be strictly instrumental”. Indeed it is with a thundering, cantering thrash conclusion. I have to say that Mermaids is also an excellent tune combining the lighter side with the rockier and including the image-conjuring lines, “Mermaids, m-m-m mermaids / fish tails everywhere / mermaids, m-m-m mermaids / fish sticks in the air”.

The album No Pocus without Hocus is an excellent piece of work and fans of heavy guitar rock with a thick stoner crust and a Floydian mantle will surely enjoy this. However, those who prefer a more progressive aspiration will not be disappointed, particularly with the closing track, Elena.

Murky Red is:
Stef Flaming: Vocals & Guitars
Patrick Dujardin: Guitars
Luk Lantin: Bass Guitar
René Marteaux: Drums
Marie Vancamp: Percussion
Yolanda Flaming: Keys

Artwork by Stef Flaming
Mascot: Maurice le Murk

Links

Murky Red web site

Reverb Nation records