Monday 23 November 2015

Music Notes: Dances with Wolves



There’s something that feels totally appropriate about Steve Hackett dancing with wolves.

I can’t put my finger on it, but the thought of one of progressive rock’s greatest guitarists naming his newest record “Wolflight” — and in the stunning accompanying video singing and playing his astonishing guitar licks amidst a sweeping tale featuring these magnificent creatures — just seems to make sense, given the provocative fantasy-like images conjured up by previous Hackett compositions.

And maybe it’ll make even more sense to you after hearing Hackett beautifully describe the reason behind it all. Listen to him tell the tale, and you buy into it all — hook, line and sinker.

“The wolf is the wilderness, and shamanic totem of the nomadic tribes who roamed the Siberian and Mongolian wastes for thousands of years,” Hackett eloquently told me recently as he was preparing for the U.S. leg of his immensely popular “Acolyte to Wolflight With Genesis Revisited” tour. “The title track is about these wild and unpredictable people. The term ‘Wolf light’ was inspired by Homer talking about the hour before dawn when the dreaming mind is still active and the imagination roams alongside the prowling wolf. It was great to spend a day playing and interacting with wolves in the hills just outside Rome. Amazing creatures, potentially dangerous, but incredibly engaging.”

There, now you’re all in, right? Thought so. Hackett has taken his audiences on similar kinds of adventures for years, whether as a member of Genesis or in his solo career, so it’s no surprise his latest effort has that spiritual, deeply evocative tone that threads through so much of his work. And as he embarks on the next part of his world tour, Hackett is stoked about what kind of show he is bringing to the U.S. this time around, which includes a stop at D.C.’s Lincoln Theater on November 13.


CURRENTLY AVAILABLE AT GONZO:

Spectral Mornings
DVD - £5.99


No comments:

Post a Comment

...BECAUSE SOME OF US THINK THAT THIS STUFF IS IMPORTANT
What happens when you mix what is - arguably - the world's most interesting record company, with an anarchist manic-depressive rock music historian polymath, and a method of dissemination which means that a daily rock-music magazine can be almost instantaneous?

Most of this blog is related in some way to the music, books and films produced by Gonzo Multimedia, but the editor has a grasshopper mind and so also writes about all sorts of cultural issues which interest him, and which he hopes will interest you as well.