After Crying 1998 - Pejtsik Péter (cello), Görgényi
Tamás, Winkler Balázs (trumpet), Egervári Gábor
(flute), Torma Ferenc (guitar)
Founded in 1986, After Crying went on to become one of the most innovative
and interesting progressive rock bands in the 1990's, pulling off the jolly
nice stunt of making real change and progress with each new studio album,
while still having a sound that was distinctly their own. The band's original
core consisted of Csaba Vedres (piano, vocals), Péter Pejtsik (cello,
vocals) and Tamás Görgenyi (lyrics). This line-up recorded
Overground Music (Periferic Records BGCD 001) in 1990 with a help of
several guest musicians on various wind instruments. The album's almost
entirely acoustic music draws heavily from classical and jazz, but unlike
the dark dissonance of the likes of Univers
Zero, this is melodic and accessible music that still bristles with
intricate counterpoint and harmonic sophistication. Despite the lack of
rhythm section (I think there is some synthesized hi-hat on one song) and
sparsity of instrumentation, the music sounds driving and full, as Vedres'
truly virtuosic piano work cascades around and bounces from Pejtsik's
alternatively lyrical and sawing cello. Recognisable influences include
Emerson, King
Crimson (in the occasional angularity and polyrhythms) and
Frank Zappa (the jazzy "European Things" is
a credited homage to Zappa and like with
many of Zappa's lyrics, its humour is both
mordant and morbid), but many sections could just as well be described as
light classical music. Shaky and accented vocals are a minus but do little to
detract from the music. The final track "Shining" is the most successful,
featuring angelic female vocals and relentless trumpet fanfares against the
darkly ethereal bedrock of cello and piano.
By the time Megalázottak és Megszomorítottak
(Quint QUI 906014) came out, the band had been augmented by the addition of
László Gacs on drums and Balázs Winkler on trumpet and
keyboards. With a more conventional, though still selectively deployed rock
rhythm section and synthesizers, After Crying develop a darker and more
symphonic chamber sound that makes a good use of space and gradual increase
of tension, so that when they come, changes and releases are dramatically
magnified. Nowhere is this more evident than on the 22-minute opening track
"A Gadarai Megszállott", which builds over light, hypnotic drumming,
churning keyboards and brooding cello and effortlessly changes mood from
lulling to sinister as piano, percussion and various winds drift in and out
of stereo field, generating enormous tension that is released in a brief burst
of manic trumpet shrieking. The two short middle tracks feature string
arrangements and solemn vocals which contribute to the sober, almost religious
atmosphere of the record; the use of Hungarian lyrics also improves the
overall vocal effect. The title track scurries along for a while with a kind
of schizoid energy and spy movie drama, but then dissolves into a floating,
funereal wind-down where whispered vocals, gossamer-like keyboards and a
mournful trumpet create an air of cathartic finality. Of all After Crying
albums, Megalázottak és Megszomorítottak is the
most consistent in its moodiness and solemnity, and as such is probably their
most consistent effort, though not the easiest one to digest. It certainly is
well worth the effort though.
After Crying's third album, Föld és ég (Periferic
Records BGCD 002), saw the arrival of guitarist Ferenc Torma, but apart from
an acoustic solo number "Zene Gitárra" his contribution is not yet
very pronounced, though he definitely adds a new sound to the palette of
keyboards, strings and winds with his fuzzy,
Fripp-like textures, especially on the rocking
"Júdás". Instead the first songs on the album are keyboard-heavy
prog in the style of ELP, with "Rondo" being a very
faithful recreation (=slavish imitation) of
The Nice/early-ELP
sound, and the two-part "Manticore " combining Emersonian keyboard bombast to
a sweeping vocal melody (making it more attractive, at least to my
ELP-unfriendly ears, than a lot of
ELP's own output). Latter songs pick up the band's
more idiosyncratic sound from where the previous album left it, and hone it
to ethereal perfection. "Leltár" features almost perfect
Gregorian-styled vocal harmonies, "Puer natus in Bethlehem" consists of just
a slow, solemn trumpet fanfare against a sombre synthesizer sky and is
devastatingly beautiful, while the 13-minute closer "Kétezer év"
bubbles and flows with silvery piano and variously ominous and tender vocals,
building and gathering intensity without ever actually erupting out of its
gothic mausoleum. All in all, Föld és ég is one of
After Crying's strongest works, and perhaps the best place for a newcomer to
start.
After the album was finished, Vedres left the band to become a concert pianist,
though he would return to the world of prog a few years later with
Townscream. The rest of the band did not sit
still, however, but pushed on and produced their most ambitious work to date.
De Profundis (Periferic BGCD 005) is a complete departure from the
previous album's Emersoniasms, being much closer to classical music, employing
a large guest cast to achieve a matching sound and skilfully combining various
discrepant instruments and influences into a working whole. The ethereal church
choir and synth pads of the opener "Bevezetés" give way to the
hybridization of "Modern idök" where half-spoken, pseudo-rap vocals and
scuffling rhythms merge with towering orchestral arrangements and melodies.
The King Crimson influence comes to fore in
"Stalker", as Torma's guitar takes the centre stage among the brooding synths
and winds, alternatively weeping mournfully and then screaming and slashing
out with flurries of Frippian feedback. The
title track is another strong, restrained symphonic chamber work, while
"Esjüszegök" takes the heavily orchestrated symphonic rock sound to
its limit. Though impressive works in their own right, the guitar, keyboard
and cello solo pieces at the middle of the album sound out of place and break
up the album's flow somewhat, making it less than a perfect effort. Still,
this is another indispensable album and stands quite unique among other
mid-1990's prog efforts, with perhaps Isildur's
Bane's magnificent Mind Volume 1 as its only real comparison.
Elsö évtized (BGCD 006/007) is a peculiar two-disc
compilation: the first disc contains a few unreleased tracks and a number of
songs drawn from the first four albums, but particularly Overground
Music. These have been remixed with new vocals and Hungarian lyrics,
which admittedly eliminates their main weakness. Of the unreleased tracks,
the most memorable are the rhapsodic chamber rock of "Vándor" and the
pleasant acoustic guitar/trumpet melodicism of the aptly titled "Novelty";
none of the rest are earth shaking. The second disc is a 1991 concert recording
with Vedres and Pejtsik both performing an impressive solo number on their
respective instruments along with impeccable renditions of songs from
Overground Music and a couple of more otherwise unreleased tracks, the
beautiful "Jó éjt!" being by far the best of these. Finally, the
band show off some of their influences by including a 1993 performance of
King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man",
a dignified, if unsurprising rendition of this old concert warhorse. Though
there is quite a lot of redundancy, Elsö évtized still
holds enough interesting material to warrant getting it, especially if you
like the acoustic sound of Overground Music, but only after getting
the more essential releases.
The first thing one notices about 6 (BGCD 009) is its bright,
yellow-dominated sleeve, quite a departure from the
any-colour-you-like-as-long-as-it's-black sketches decorating the earlier
albums. The music inside hasn't changed as radically, but changes there have
been and not always for the better. The band has returned to English lyrics,
which eliminates some of the distinctive air of the earlier releases, and the
exquisite vocal harmonies of Föld és ég have
by now been almost completely replaced by harsher and too often inadequate
individual contributions from several singers. There is greater reliance on
digital synthesizer textures, and more
Crimson-like angular rockers than before,
some more successful than others (the-big-band-from-Hell number "Big Evil Fun
Fair Finale" being an example of the successes). In contrast, there are also
a number of quieter numbers, most notably the classical piano solo "Burlesque"
and the evocative "Sleepin' Chaplin". Somewhere between them is "Struggle for
Life", a Hungarian folk melody given almost a cinematic treatment and
interspersed with a wonderfully chilling recitation section featuring a poem
by the band's (apparent) favourite poet Attila Josez. The album concludes
with the aptly titled "Conclusion", a tribute to Keith Emerson that reminds
of Emerson-Lake-Powell but is far superior to anything that formation ever
did. Veering dangerously close to sappy at first, the song eventually rises to
a nice synth-fanfare propelled sweep, but this version suffers from weak
vocals and thin synth sounds and doesn't do full justice to the composition.
The effect one gets from this album is of fragmentation, with several high
points but somehow a more pedestrian overall impression than with De
Profundis. While 6 is of the calibre that not many contemporaneous
prog bands could have hoped to match, for a band with After Crying's track
record it must be regarded as a mediocre effort.
After Crying's next release was a compilation album Almost Pure
Instrumental (BGCD 027). It has its problems: both Föld és
ég and De Profundis are represented by measly one track,
which gives little concrete idea of the albums themselves (especially as the
Föld és ég track is "Rondo"), and most of the longer
works are omitted. On the plus side, it does gather a lot of the band's best
material into a quite workable and consistent whole, and includes four
shortish tracks that are unavailable elsewhere. Of these, the most successful
is the Mendelhsson-derived "Pilgrim's March", a warm, relaxing tune with
floating percussion and an Oldfield-styled
electric guitar melody. Like all compilations, however, it is primarily either
for new-comers or completists.
A wider cross section of the band's music can be found on Struggle for
Life (BGCD 054-55), a double live album recorded mostly in 1999. Many of
the songs here are superior to studio versions in terms of energy and impact;
this is especially true with "Conclusion", which is stretched into a
thirty-minute medley with the inclusion of both parts of "Manticore" and a
number of solo performances. The solo numbers, including Torma's
Soundscapes-like guitar/synth showcase "Crash and Cry", work better in this
kind of context than they work on the studio albums. This time the
King Crimson cover is "Starless", performed
in 1997 with John Wetton guesting on bass and vocals. Wetton's voice isn't
in top condition, but the band pull off a suitably passionate, large cast
version of the classic. The second disc also has a multimedia section with
three MP3s (one previously unreleased song, the rather skimpy "Radio
Rarotonga"), band biography and some lyrics. This section is omitted from the
one-disc, "essential" version of the album, though it has "Radio Rarotonga" as
a normal audio track. Apart from being an excellent live recording, Struggle
for Life is a good summing up of the first ten years in After Crying's
recording career. Hopefully the next ten years will be equally fruitful.
-- Kai Karmanheimo
|
Abacus in 1982 - Standing up: Norbert Leifert (keyboards, vocals, flutes), Klaus Kohlhase
(bass), Rainer Niklowitz (drums) and Jürgen Wimpelberg (keyboards, vocals, guitars).
Reclining: Manfred Heilmann (lead vocals, guitars)
Abel Ganz in 1994 - Robert Wilson, Chris Forsyth, Hugh Carter, Colin Johnston (standing)
and Stuart Clyde
Mick Abrahams
The Adachi Brothers - Ryusuke and Source "K"
Aditus 1982 - (Not in photo order) George Henríquez (keys, vocals), Pedro Castillo (guitars, vocals),
Sandro Liberatoscioli (bass, vocals) and Valerio González (drums, percussion)
Advent - Mike Carroll (drums, not a permanent band member), Mark Ptak (keyboards,
lead vocals, percussion), Alan Benjamin (guitars, stick, bass, mandolin, violin,
keyboards, glockenspiel, backing vocals) and Henry Ptak (keyboards, lead vocals,
electronic percussion). Not pictured, Roy Wilson (drums), also not a permanent
band member. (Photo by Amy Benjamin)
Advent 2007 - Henry Ptak (keyboards, lead vocals, mandolin, eclectronic percussion),
Benjamin Rose (fretless & fretted basses, backing vocals), Greg Katona (guitars, backing vocals),
Alan Benjamin (guitars, Stick, bass, mandolin, violin, keyboards, glockenspiel, recorder, backing
vocals), Mark Ptak (keyboards, lead vocals, percussion) and Drew Siciliano (drums) (Photo by
Amy Benjamin)
Ageness - 1997 Imageness Line-up