blackfield is a project by the british prog mastermind steven wilson and the israeli rock star aviv geffen, playing alternative and art rock, sometimes even pop. the first song i want to present is from their first album, blackfield, and called blackfield. it comes with a beautiful music video, which for whatever reason didn’t show up in the music video series.

(apparently the video does not work in all countries, for example in germany. if it doesn’t work for you, try this version of the song without the video.)

the second piece is the opener of their second album, blackfield ii, titled once. it was also the opener on their tour in 2007, when i first saw them. this is a live recording, but of very high quality, both the video and the sound. if you want to watch the band, click into the window to open it in youtube.

a very beautiful and calm song from their first album is lullaby:

another beautiful, more rocking song about love is epidemic from their second album:

finally, here’s a song from their first album, called cloudy now. it’s in fact a song written by aviv geffen, which he used to play on his solo tours, which was then translated by steven wilson to english and recorded by the two. it’s a somewhat doomy, depressing song, and one of the most impressing i remember from the concert.

(and yes, aviv also iteratively removed his tops during the switzerland concert, until ending up as in the video. i think the girls liked it :-) )

tiamat is a rather versatile swedish band. starting as a death/black metal band, they evolved to a gothic/doom rock/metal band with heavy progressive and/or psychedelic influences, producing a wide range of music which is sometimes not even near to metal anymore.

let me start with two wonderful instrumental, experimental tracks. the first is planets from their famous album wildhoney, from which i already presented gaia on spielwiese:

the second is sumer by night from their album judas christ:

while often playing with such instrumental, almost psychedelic parts, they also play various types of metal. a very easy going song is brighter than the sun from their album skeleton skeletron, which is almost a bit like popular music, wouldn’t it be so dark, so black:

any color you like as long as it’s black
you could have anything if you just give it back

two other songs i like a lot are cain and ten thousand tentacles, next to each other on the album prey. they are best listened to one after another, as ten thousand tentacles is an instrumental continuation of the ending of cain. a very fascinating piece of music.

another song from the same album, the pentagram, with lyrics taken from a poem by aleister crowly, is a very calm song. it’s pretty long, and contains many beautiful instrumental soundscapes.

finally, here’s a track from tiamat‘s newest album, anathemes, called katarraktis apo aima (greek for a waterfall of blood).

agalloch is another band i stumbled about while browsing my favourite record store in zurich. during their existence, they produced four full-length albums ranging over different styles. i particularly like the latter three: the mantle, ashes against the grain and marrow of the spirit.

unfortunately, all songs from the mantle are only playable on youtube for certain regions (in which i’m not living apparently). there are a couple of live recordings available, but i prefer the studio versions, especially when listening to the songs the first time. in case you can find them somewhere, the lodge and the hawthorne passage (featuring a quote from det sjunde inseglet) are two very good songs on that album. it is unfortunate that i can’t include these songs here since they are rather different, compared to the songs i present below.

from the album ashes against the grain, some songs are available on youtube, for example not unlike the waves, a dark, atmospheric and heavy song with both clear vocals and distorted screaming:

another song i really like from that album is the opener limbs. the second song i want to present is from their newest album marrow of the spirit, released november 2010. it is called black lake nidstång and has a duration of over 17 minutes. it’s my favourite piece from that album, and not that easy to digest.

update: someone uploaded the complete song together with a very nice photo show:

finally, here’s another piece from marrow of the spirit, called to drown. the first half is rather calm, while the second is more and more dramatic, until the music evolves into noise and finally into sounds of water, sounds of waves.

the story of frost* and me starts many years ago, at new year’s eve, when a friend gave me a promo version of their debut album milliontown. this turned out to be a nice progressive rock act, led by a songwriter who usually writes pop pieces, for example for the atomic kitten, who decided to go back to his roots and do some progressive rock. one very nice piece from this album is no me no you:

the album ends with a 26 minutes long song called milliontown, a really beautiful piece of prog:

after disbanding in 2006, they came together back in 2007 and released another album in 2008 called experiments in mass appeal, which i don’t like as much as the first album though.

kauan is a band from russia, whose lyrics are in finnish and russian. starting as a folk/doom metal band, they continuously changed their style and now fit into the post rock category. i randomly stumbled about one of their albums on amazon, since for some reason one of their album was wrongly labelled as an album by mar de grises. i liked the songs i tried on youtube, especially orkidea from their second album tietäjän laulu. orkidea is a rather calm song, with heavy guitars only appearing seldomly:

another very beautiful piece is valveuni from their newest album, aava tuulen maa. beautiful melodies and soundscapes await the listener:

finally, here’s a piece from the first album lumikuuro, showing the darker, doomier side of the band’s past. opposed to the above two songs, this one contains growls: