Artist: THE TANGENT
Album: NOT AS GOOD AS THE BOOK (2CD)

Release date: 2008
Media type: CD

For keyboardist/vocalist Andy Tillison, it’s mainly the inconsistencies of an alleged zeitgeist that provoke him to realize his musical visions. Together with his band, The Tangent, Tillison has assigned himself the rather difficult task of creating with a successively changing line-up music which, despite all cross-references to the Seventies, still sounds topical and future-oriented. “The idea behind the first three albums was to rediscover the styles and sounds and ambition of the 1970s progressive music scene before it was artificially replaced by record companies and the media”, he says. “However, just because an idea is thirty years old does not mean that it is backward looking.” With their fourth offering, the double album Not As Good As The Book, The Tangent have even gone one step further. Tillison: “Our new album, while rooted in the same tradition, has a bigger palette of sounds and styles. This time we did not restrict ourselves to formulae at all, and the overall idea is having established the Tangent’s basic roots, we can now develop them and do something different. It’s a more live sounding record than its predecessors, and I think it rocks more than the other three.”

With a lot of love of detail and a rich, warm sound, Not As Good As The Book has become an adventurous journey though different styles and moods, sonic colours, and dramatic arcs. The album captivates its listeners for more than 90 minutes, and despite its diversity succeeds in never losing sight of the central theme. “The Tangent is based around songs. We may be musically ambitious and complex, but usually at the heart of each piece lies a very simple song, something that we hope most people can relate to. Sometimes they are stories, sometimes observations, sometimes sad, sometimes funny. We embellish our music both symphonically and contrapuntally, use jazz, familiar progressive rock methods, often refer to the Canterbury bands and frequently intersperse the songs with improvisation. But they are still songs first and foremost. We don’t sing songs about the usual prog subjects, no hobbits, orcs or subterranean worlds, we’ve always sung about real things and tried to establish progressive music as something that is relevant to life in the time we live. That, above all typifies The Tangent.”
The band are also proud to announce a renowned new addition, namely Jakko M Jakszyk, whose reputation as a brilliant guest musician is based on his work with great names such as Level 42, Robert Fripp and Gavin Harrison. Jakszyk gives the album that certain something, his contributions are the cherry on the cake, additional highlights. “He is an amazing player who’s worked with so many people. His impressive ability to play both Bob Fripp and Greg Lake’s parts in the 21st Century Schizoid Band knocked our socks off. His work on the new album is prominent and vital.”
The unusual ‘The Ethernet’ in particular sees Tillison, Jakszyk and their colleagues Guy Manning (acoustic instruments), Jonas Reingold (bass), Jaime Jalazar (drums), Theo Travis (saxophone, flute) and guest singer Julie King embark on exceptionally exciting paths. “‘The Ethernet’ is something new to us. It’s a song I’m very pleased with and I don’t feel that it is as “retro” in feel as a lot of our stuff has been described. At the heart of it is a song, as usual, but we’ve used a lot of different techniques when writing it. It’s as much like Thomas Dolby or Ian Brown than it is like traditional prog. But ironically perhaps, this one brings us closer to Pink Floyd and Genesis than anything we’ve done before. I originally described it as a cross between Peter Gabriel and Genesis.”

An unusual album such as Not As Good As The Book naturally deserves unusual packaging, so the special edition of this double CD comes complete with a 100-page booklet and a short story with ingenious illustrations. “It’s a humorous sci-fi story about a man lost in time,” Tillison explains, “with lots of references to progressive music and the way in which it is seen, in the past, the present and the future. It has been beautifully illustrated by French Bande Dessinй artist Antoine Ettori, and altogether the package of the special edition is a quite new and original form, an album with a novel is not something you come across every day!”

TRACKLIST CD 1:

"A Crisis In Mid Life"

1. A Crisis In Mid Life
2. Lost In London (25 Years Later)
3. The Ethernet
4. Celebrity Purйe
5. (The Future Was) Not As Good as The Book
6. A Sale Of Two Souls
7. Bat Out Of Basildon

TRACKLIST CD 2:

Part One - "Four Egos, One War" (Continuous 22 minute track in 4 subsections)
1. Ours
2. Theirs
3. His
4. Mine

Part Two - " The Full Gamut" (Continuous 22 minute track in 9 subsections)
1. The D599
2. Goteborg
3. Last Tango
4. Studio Tan
5. Not A Drill
6. Southend
7. The A1 north of Paris
8. Four Last Days
9. The D599 and the A 61

LINE-UP:

Andy Tillison - Vocals, Keyboards
Jonas Reingold - Bass Guitar
Guy Manning - Acoustic Instruments & Voice
Theo Travis - Saxophones and Flute
Jaime Salazar - Drums
Jakko M Jakzsyk - Electric Guitar & Voice

Guests:
Julie King - Voices
Unknown French Man - Violin