The Tangent have certainly come a long way since Andy Tillison decided that he needed another project outside of PO90 and formed this band with Guy Manning and Roine Stolt. Neither are there these days, but he does have Jakko M. Jakszyk (Level 42) on guitar, Theo Travis (Robert Fripp, Gong, Porcupine Tree, Bill Nelson, No-Man, Steven Wilson etc) on sax, flutes and clarinets, Jonas Reingold (The Flower Kings) on bass, Gavin Harrison (King Crimson, Porcupine Tree) on drums and singer David Longdon (Big Big Train) so none of these are slouches. This is a concept album, based on ‘The Rite of Work’. There is a narration where it is explained that on this island 50 million people wake up, and an hour later they have to be more than 30 miles away doing something that they don’t want to do, so that for a short period of time they can say that they can own a building!
This is a very English prog album, both in music and lyrics. I wonder how many people who have never heard ‘Steve Wright in the Afternoon’ will understand the reference to factoids, but for someone like me who remembers when Steve was on Radio One (as opposed to Radio Two), all of this just made me smile. Musically it is very diverse, as although obvious reference is “Days of Future Passed” which starts with the beginning of the day and ending with the night, while here we start with the beginning of the day and ending up with “Evening TV” having survived the trip home through the rush hour, there is actually a lot going on as Andy brings in influences and textures from all forms of music. Some of the music is designed to make you think, while at other times it is almost pure pop. It doesn’t always hit the mark, but when it does it is both enthralling and exciting.
Many years ago, Andy eked out a living as a sound engineer and was responsible for recording many independent bands at the end of the Seventies, and it is back to this era we go with the punk power pop version of “Hat”, which may or may not be from 1979 as stated in the title.
It may not be perfect, but yet again Andy has produced something that is definitely worthy of investigation. If you haven’t come across this band before then you owe it to yourself to do so now.
