We get to play a very wide range of songs on NMC and to show an equally wide range of videos to go with them.
Some are pure pop, at one end of the scale, while others are like miniature works of art and this is one of them.
Patrick El-Hag has visited NMC twice before and established himself already as a serious musician, a philosopher and a storyteller par excellence.
It’s hard to categorise him beyond that except to say that he is a sort of loose interwoven image of the likes of Jon Anderson from Yes, Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull, and Adam Ant, to which he adds the sort of darkness you didn’t know existed in Sweden, where it isn’t all bibbity bobbity Agnetha.
But at the same time he’s never threatening, just curious.
‘Hertigen av Brandgul‘ means the Duke of Brandgul, aka the Duke de L’Orange, and he’s a character who has featured previously here, in ‘I ett glas’ (‘In a glass’), Part Two of a trilogy about this cleverly invented individual.
Meanwhile the album ‘Historien om Brödraskapet’ translates as ‘The Story of the Brotherhood’ and is the title of the concept album El-Hag has dreamed about realising since the first staging in 1991. It took him 34 years fully to complete a work that last 34 minutes. That’s an equation of statistical brilliance.
There are no half measures in his work. Everything seems to be meticulously worked through, whether it’s the lyricism, the style of music – which is a sort of baroque madrigal in parts and black metal without the metal in others – or the mystifying video which attacks you with multiple images that don’t quite add up. (There’s a video for every track on YouTube)
Such as the ever present metronome, the mirror that isn’t, a mask straight out of Eyes Wide Shut if the Sun King had been there, mannequins and, to paraphrase a line from the movie Tombstone aimed at Billy Zane – “the prettiest man I ever saw.”
What all this means I haven’t a clue. I’ll just say that if Patrick El-Hag doesn’t end up making this stuff in Hollywood there ain’t no justice in the world.
A vinyl edition of the album is planned for the autumn.
Find him on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatrickElHagArtist
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickelhag/
3 Responses
Fabulous article about a Fabulous artist.
Thanks for the comment, Niki.
A long time coming, thank you for featuring this brilliant individual again!