album orchestral de Blind Guardian

[Everflow]

Le point sur ce nouveau projet par Hansi Kursch, et son association avec un auteur de fantasy :

Vocalist Hansi Kürsch of German power metallers BLIND GUARDIAN has issued the following update:

"Busy seasons are usually harbingers of great things to come. Festivals, regular studio work and, above all, the orchestral album are making this a very exciting summer for us. Let's keep the focus on the orchestral album one more time. We have spectacular news!

"Every orchestral project needs a concept and such a concept demands a great story. To get a story that fits together perfectly with our majestic music, we are joining forces with Germany's best fantasy author Markus Heitz (check out his 'Die Zwerge' ['The Dwarves'] series). Markus is one of my favorite writers of 'high fantasy.' I have been really amazed by several of his books over the last years but was finally and completely convinced about him being the perfect choice for our project by 'Gerechter Zorn' ('Righteous Wrath') — the first part of his newest trilogy, 'Die Legenden der Albae' ('Legends of the Albae'). The way he weaves in different aspects to his splendid universe immediately told me that the quest for the one to come up with the right story for our music was over. Although the final completion of this quite unusual cooperation most probably will keep us busy until 2013, things nonetheless become clearer the more we exchange ideas. The creation of a great new storyboard and the involvement of such a suitable concept are the perfect frame for this 'soundtrack/musical-like' anthems we have come up with over the years. It is absolutely great that Markus is willing to follow us on such an ambitious voyage.

"One very interesting aspect certainly is the definite intention to combine the identity of our music (in a quite different shape) with one of Markus' most famous, but not completely discovered, worlds and its heroes. I have no doubt that we will design great new images and come up with nothing but pure magic. Luckily, Markus was very familiar with our band and music. Since he is part of the fantasy scene almost as long as we are, he grew up with our music when he was a die-hard fantasy rôle-playing gamer in the '80s and '90s. This, of course, makes my life far easier in exchanging ideas and in explaining what we need to complete a perfect conceptual album. There is so much interaction: at one point it is the music dictating the story at other points it is the story having an ultimate impact on the album's completion. Pure creativity! In addition, Markus is a very nice and down-to-earth person who has a very special view on things. Last but not least, he has been very pleased with the pieces of music we provided him with.

"By now I can feel a certain jealousy coming up within you. We will keep you updated. The journey has just begun."

[Mr. Sandman]

Y' a plus qu' à attendre qu'il sorte maintenant !

[Everflow]

Pendant ce temps ils font des dédicaces pour des vernissages de jeux vidéos

[Mr. Sandman]

oui, ça doit être les musiciens les plus geeks du circuit !

[Everflow]

Je me demande d'ailleurs comment ça se fait qu'ils n'aient pas encore sortis de jeu vidéo complet à leur nom (et pas seulement une BO).

[Everflow]

Plus de détails sur ce projet dans cette interview en français :

http://www.radiometal.com/article/blind ... enir,53775

[Everflow]

C'est toujours prévu... pour 2014.

Powerline: What's the update on an orchestral project for BLIND GUARDIAN? Is it still slated for 2013?

Kürsch: 2013 sounds a little ambitious at the moment. I am hoping for 2014. This could be a great year. Ever since "A Night At The Opera", my goal is to release the orchestral album the same year we are going to release the studio album. In vain, so far. But I will never give up hope.

[Mr. Gig]

Hi there,

…first a late, but still fresh, Happy New Year to everyone. After getting rid of some bonus pounds gained over the last few months due to live abstinence we are now getting ready for a very busy and exciting year of creativity and efficiency. Wishful thinking, you think? Blasphemy, I would reply! As most of you may have recognized, we have been busy all during 2012 with some additional touring activity and some extra missions, such as the completion of A Traveler’s Guide to Space and Time, which is a great legacy. It features all of our material from the Virgin era in a new and accurate framework, beautifully designed by Felipe Machado. The whole box offers a great insight about that particular part of our career. Even though it took us more time than expected, we are really pleased with the final result. It’s something we are really proud of and something which you hopefully are going to enjoy as much as we do. I just got my sample yesterday, and am really blown away.

This, of course, has not been the only thing we were doing during the last year. For the sake of fun and leisure we were working on new stuff and progressed far quicker than we would have expected. Not that this means a lot in the generous production time frame of Blind Guardian. But it might secure a late 2014 release for at least one BG album. As you may have read in interviews we are intending to bring a long story to a well deserved and hopefully happy end. As already announced with A Twist in the Myth and also with At the Edge of Time, apart from a regular album there finally will also be the release of the orchestral album. Why am I so sure about not being wrong again this time? I have no idea. Nothing new here, one could say.

The difference might be that throughout the last 18 months we have recorded 7 songs in Prague. There probably is a handful of additional songs to record during this year, but they are also already finalized with regard to composition. In theory we do not need any further songs for this album but ideas simply seem to flow endlessly… The reason why this album is still far from being released is partly based on the regular album, which we definitely would like to release first. At this point in time I am in a very tricky situation. How to continue from here? I think it is probably easiest to simply continue by telling you something about the regular album since this would be next anyway. Keep in mind that “next” is relative!

Well, we have started working on four songs and already were able to finish two songs musically. The working titles are “Encrypted Time” (I think this title is inspired by André’s passion for World of Warcraft or so – I can only guess…) and “The Ocean” (here, André has been inspired by my undefined mumbling in the song). “Encrypted Time” is a modern speed metal song with some tribal aspects and some 70′s inspirations, while “The Ocean” is a very progressive (this time I talk about ELP meets Savatage art rock when I say progressive) orchestra dominated song which will give you a further glimpse of what to expect from the orchestral album. I am clueless about the right story board for “Encrypted Time” but “The Ocean” could be used as a theme opener for the orchestral project. We will see… The other four songs seem to turn out very special and obviously very different. Working titles: “The Irish Hill”, “Prophecies”, “Soundtrack 2″ and “Midtempo Song”. I cannot tell you exactly about how many times we have had a song over the years which was first called “Midtempo Song”. I am pretty sure we are not the only band abusing this spectacular title over and over again. Thank God, the title is not copyright protected, yet. We would be in trouble then. Maybe it is and that’s the reason why it barely ever ended up as a title on the album.

Out of those tracks “Prophecies” is the one which is developed the most. It is almost straight forward, has a very strong pre and main chorus and offers some “Queensrÿchish” prog (this time I do mean Queensrÿche when I say prog) elements in combination with some Blind Guardian fantasy metal. A nice one. I’ll keep it short from here: “Irish Hills” might be a surprise with some Irish melodies, which none would expect in a song with such a name… “Midtempo Song” is a great song of misunderstandings and technical failures, the result so far is a little surprising to everyone involved and has nothing to do at all with a song entitled “Midtempo Song”. I enjoy this one a lot, because I cannot remember us doing something like this. The song is still in a very early phase and André has kept it hidden from me for a while now. “Soundtrack 2″ has been the first song fragment for the new album. We had put that aside for a while, but it contains some very heavy elements, almost thrash metal like. Let’s see how this is going to end up. You see, there is a lot in the pipeline already. But there certainly will be more new stuff during the year. Even though we have already started to record some drums for the album at the end of the last year, the whole thing is going to keep us busy until the spring/summer of 2014 for sure.

Going to Prague to see how the orchestra songs come alive is a very special and intense moment for us. Thanks to “Sacred Worlds” and “Wheel of Time” I can say that we have learnt a lot about scoring, recording and mixing when it comes to such music. You will notice a great improvement when you listen to the final result of this adventurous trip we have started so long ago. Last week some of us went there again to record “The Ocean” , a pure orchestral song called “Misty Mountain” and some more stuff. We once again had to realize how ambitious this whole project is and how time demanding! Luckily, everyone who is involved has understood, that there will be no compromises. We would never accept “second best” or “we fix it in the mix” here. This means that even though we can see the end of the road here, it still is a long and winding one and will demand our full concentration for the next 12 to 18 months. Charlie (Bauerfiend) and I already did some demo recordings for four of the earlier recorded orchestra songs sometime last year. We all consider this session and its result a very promising experience. Now I am ready to start proper album recordings for this one. I will do my best to finish most of the vocals during the year. This seems a very ambitious goal but is not impossible. I say that in the first days of January… Apart from the music and the concept we will also work on some additional surprises. Keep yourself prepared. One thing is for sure there will be nothing comparable to this on the market. It’s not a typical soundtrack, a typical musical, nor it is a rock opera. It is typical Blind Guardian – more or less without band. At that point, I would say this is going to stay unique until we will release part 2. The good thing: we already have some material for it and another 15-17 years before it has to be released. Chinese Democracy was yesterday.

Cheers,

Hansi

[Everflow]

Je n'ai pas lu le communiqué, alors je ne sais pas si ça concerne un album "orchestral" ou un nouvel album classique, à moins que les 2 ne fassent qu'un? Je vais vous laisse conclure

On May 31st Blind Guardian will take a break and perform a special best-of set at the Out & Loud festival in Geiselwind/Germany.

Right now, the band is working intensively at the Twilight Hall Studio in Grefrath/Germany on the songs for an upcoming new record. Today Hansi Kürsch gives an update on the recording process:

"Surprise, surprise! I am sure no one expected me to be back with news about a band called Blind Guardian so quickly. The reason is quite simple, I’m a workaholic and I have no idea what to do with all my remaining energy at the moment. Therefore I have decided to spend some time with thoughts about Blind Guardians future plans. Here is my remarkable output.

"Like the majority of you, I was also very surprised when our show in Geiselwind was announced for May 2014. I suppose that I, or one of the other guys, have agreed to this show. I’ll probably never figure out who did it, but that’s not important now, the show itself is of importance. To be honest, all of us cannot wait to get back on stage. Our stage abstinence seems much longer to us than 'just' 2 years. Since we were asked to do a 'Best Of' show we do not even have to rehearse, this is more or less the type of show we have done in the past anyway. I still hope we can put in some surprises since no one really knows what we consider our 'Best Of' songs at the moment. It might differ from 'Memories Of A Time To Come' though. Right now I’m working on a possible set list and I’ll cross my fingers that this will be approved when the others have a look at it.

"By announcing this live appearance we also secretly announced the intended termination of our album production for the end of May. We obviously have progressed quickly, in Blind Guardian terms that is. Indeed, everything looks very promising with regards to our songwriting and our production. We have good reasons to believe that the album is going to be completely finished at that point. Let’s hope I will not be proven to be the reincarnation of good old Münchhausen again. Anyway, even the worst case scenario would have us not being too far away from completion at that point. Since we have already completed several production steps on the new album the picture gets clearer and clearer. Although not necessarily clear enough to decide whether I’ll go lyrically for individual topics on each separate song or instead for a conceptual album. On one hand the concept would have a strong fantasy link and on the other hand it would contain some typical Dystopian elements, because this is also what I musically find in most of the songs. They will all feature an almost magical grandeur but will present some very harsh disturbing elements as well. Therefore such a concept might be very suitable. I will have to sleep on it for a while until I’m able to make a decision.

"Whenever we start songwriting I try to create a plan in my mind detailing which qualities I would love to feature on the next BG album and what general impression I would like to create. Very often at the end things come out quite different and I’m surprised which qualities or preferences have shown up then. This time there seems to be a collective urge (without even having talked about it) among all members to feature the more aggressive side of BLIND GUARDIAN this time.

"Right now, we are working on 5 faster songs. As far as I remember last time I have mentioned ‘Encrypted Time’ and ‘Holy Grail’ (which are both proceeding well in the album production), so I am going tell you a little bit about ‘Winter’s Coming’, ‘Outcast’ and ‘Song 9’. The first one is based on Marcus’ idea of a 90's orientated speed/thrash song. We have finished a good two thirds of this one. It’s fast and heavy, or was it heavy and fast? I have no idea how he came up with the title ‘Winter’s Coming’… ‘Song 9’ is a fresh one which used to be a collection of parts at first, but then developed into something very special. I would describe it as a refreshing combat between ‘Guardian Of The Blind’, ‘The Script For My Requiem’ and ‘Ride Into Obsession’ only disturbed by a fairly straightforward chorus. If you ask me this one is born to become a 'classic, but first underrated by the band' song. My favorite among the fast ones certainly would be ‘Outcast’. A song full of surprises. The old school die-hard fan will probably complain later that this one has a soft intro (epic and sad), but even this person would have to agree that afterwards we keep up the speed on this one to the very end. The song is a roller coaster ride through the last three decades of metal. I love it!

"As for the epic tracks I love ‘Irish Hill’ the most. I have decided to entitle this ‘Grand Parade’ as ‘Irish Hill’ never really fit the song. Imagine a mixture of ‘Wheel Of Time’ and ‘Nightfall’ and you might be there. We have a beautiful orchestration for this. This one certainly demands a lot of time during production simply because there really is a massive amount of elements in it. Not as much as in ‘And Then There Was Silence’, but a lot…

"‘Midtempo Song’ is the most 'commercial' song on the album so far. 'Commercial' in a positive way, of course. It would deserve a title like ‘Irish Hills’ more than ‘Grand Parade’ did when it was called ‘Irish Hills’, but who said that life is always fair… To give justice to the song I also have to say that it is very progressive but also very catchy. ‘The Throne’ is another epic piece we are working on. I have just started working on vocals for this one last Friday. It is too early for me to describe this one more precisely. What I can say is that this one is the perfect link between ‘Grand Parade’ and ‘The Ocean’. This last one is already completely recorded except for the vocals. ‘Prophecies’ and ‘Encrypted Time’ are completely recorded and the same can be said about some older B-songs, which we have decided to finalize with this session as well. The BG pundit knows about which songs I am talking.

"The songwriting period is almost finished by now and the final production session is going to start next week and will keep us busy until Geiselwind. As I think about that I better stop thinking and start songwriting instead."

[Everflow]

Cet album verra finalement le jour l'an prochain, en parallèle d'un live :

Spark TV, which is part of the Czech monthly magazine Spark, conducted an interview with vocalist Hansi Kürsch of German power metallers BLIND GUARDIAN before the band's December 20 show in Prague. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the orchestral album BLIND GUARDIAN has been working on for the last few years:

Hansi: "We still are working on that. We definitely are going to release a live album somewhere in the middle of next year. And we're going to continue with the orchestral album. I hope to be finished with everything, including mixing, at the end of 2016, but I doubt that there is a chance that this is going to be released [in 2016], but it will be released in 2017."

"It is new material. We started writing these songs, I would say, almost twenty years ago. When we did [1998's] 'Nightfall In Middle-Earth', we figured that there were some songs which would not fit in because they were too orchestral, and at that point, we just thought, 'Well, it would be a waste to have a band involved, so just the orchestra and the singing would do the trick.' And ever since, we've built up these songs and came up with new ideas, and they changed a little bit with each album we were working on. Because the progression the people [in the band] were going through had an effect on the songs we were composing. Even though they were different than the regular stuff, they contain a little bit of each era. And this is the interesting thing. But they fit together really well. And just by listening to the music and the vocals, you have the feeling of a great, gigantic, 'Lord Of The Rings'-ish story, and this is what we are intending to make even more obvious to the people by releasing it as we originally intended to have it. Later on, we may even involve the band, because it is possible. There are, I think, eleven or twelve songs we have composed so far, and we are working on interludes and some reprises and stuff like that at the moment. But at the very end, once this tour is finished, I'm going to sing all the stuff. And there are a lot of different characters and they will be all performed by. You know, it's a lot of storytelling, so it's going to be nice to see how people will react on it. And we have worked with an orchestra from Prague, and it's great to see them back this year. We are intending to have two more sessions here for the reprises and all the stuff, and then we are basically done. And I hope that [longtime BLIND GUARDIAN producer] Charlie [Bauerfeind] is going to be finished with the mixing, let's say, in November [or] December [of 2016]."

On the upcoming live album:

Hansi: "We [recorded] everything. We're doing a sort of best-of collection of all the shows we have done, and we are going for the best songs and the best performances, which means on one hand, it depends on the audience, and on the other hand, it also depends on our performance. They're quite different from city to city and from the status the band has been in. So it's quite entertaining for us to listen to all these shows."

"Our last [live] album is twelve years old already, so it's about the right time, because we have released three other albums, so there's plenty of new stuff, but also plenty of old stuff, which the people always wanna listen to. It's interesting for us to see the development of the band during the years because, from what I can say is that we have become a far, far better live band than we have been twelve years ago, so the attraction on the songs, even if it's the same songs, at least for some of the songs, will be the difference in the performance — it's tighter, it's more professional. On the other hand, live always depends on the different feeling of the music and everything. So it will be nice to see how everything turned into a different direction."

On whether there will be a concert DVD to go along with the live album:

Hansi: "We'll do something like a DVD with it, but it's more a regular live album we're planning on at the moment. We did some recordings and some filming. I don't know what we're doing with it — if it's coming along with the CD as an extra DVD or if we do some bonus stuff on the DVD, I have no idea at the moment, but, yes, there is some filming as well."

Read more at http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/blind- ... iDBKY8U.99