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Nordic Music Central Viking Hero

Meadows & io (Norway) – Icaros (sample track from the album Above and Below)

There has been a lot of prog rock in NMC this year. A genre that never went away and is yet making a comeback as I see it.

Hence I carried this one over for a week, an album, ‘Above and Below’, released by Meadows & io at the end of November, and coincidentally also from Kongsberg, the small town about 80 km (50 miles to the east of Oslo which was once the country’s second city and which is the home of Krokofant, another prog band which featured here only last week.

I don’t know what the ‘io’ bit means; I thought it might be Norwegian for ‘et al’ but Mr Google couldn’t help me this time. There is some AI based software by that name but I doubt there’s any connection.

‘Above and Below’ is their second album, a full 15 years after the first, ‘Fieldwork’.

Sticking to our philosophy of the last couple of years at looking at a sample track, I did consider ‘Freak of nature’, which was released as a single back in October but opted instead for ‘Icaros’ because flying too close to the sun and having my wings burned off is an experience I know only too well, metaphorically speaking.

‘Meadows & io’ tell me that they are “at the melodic end of the prog-sphere, this being the reason we refer to it as Space Rock.”

That got me thinking they might be off the wall like Henge, but none of it.

The longest track on the album at eight and a half minutes, it starts off as bombastically as you like, as if the Mothership was playing the five tones to the Earthlings at Devil’s Peak in ‘Close Encounters’, except that there are four.

Then it is syncopated with select bass notes and a doom laden vocal section is introduced, one that sounds like a devil worshipper preparing a human sacrifice.

A heavier, synthesised segment follows that, from about the 3:30 mark, then giving way to one that channels King Crimson and especially in those very prominent bass notes before a full on synthesiser assault. Never mind Battle of the Bands. This could be Battle of the Nords vs. the Korgs, while the guitar isn’t exactly left out of the proceedings.

If your preference is for ‘all round sound’ you’ll find it here.

They describe themselves as an art project rather than a band, and, somewhat conversely, that they are maximalist, noisy and dynamic and while I wouldn’t argue with that there is form and substance in what they do. ‘Icaros’ could be the soundtrack of any amount of dark, good vs. evil films and the one I couldn’t get out of my mind listening to this track is ‘Eyes wide shut’, especially that weird masquerade ball.

Here’s the thing, though. It isn’t representative of the album, most of the tracks being somewhat more upbeat than this, while not losing anything in their bombasticity (Made up word!)

They add that live shows, known as ‘Orion’ are “syncronised to otherworldly visual video art”. Now that has to be worth seeing.

Find them on:

Website: https://www.meadowsandio.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meadowsandio

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meadowsandio/

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