Music:
Member Since: 6/5/2007
Influences: Marc Bolan (Tyrannosaurus Rex period 1967-1970), Michael Nyman, Henry Purcell, Rammstein, Muse, Siouxsie and the Banshees, King Crimson, Black Sabbath etc
Sounds Like: early Marc Bolan, Donovan, Pixies, Placebo, Left Banke, Syd Barrett, Robyn Hitchcock
Re-Animator! New Album out now!:
“Gothic-psych-baroque-rocker waxing demented in a way only an Englishman can...impeccable.†(Goldmine, USA).
‘Absolute genius! A great piece of melancholic music. A bittersweet mixture of soft old school Batcave and real Gothic’. (‘Black’, German Rock Magazine)
“Genius at play! Roland must be ranked with the most creative and unique songwriters of his generation...the work of an exceptional talent. If Shakespeare, Poe and Conan Doyle were alive today, they would surely have some Roland in their record collections. Unfortunately they’re dead...what’s your excuse?†(Bucketful of Brains, UK)
England’s psych-pop guru Paul Roland, described by one-time label mate Robyn Hitchcock as ‘the male Kate Bush’, releases his first new rock album for ten years on his own label, Gaslight Records, on June 16th.. ‘Re-Animator’ (GASCD 555) features contributions from musicians who have recorded with Caravan, Jimi Hendrix and Steve Hillage.
Those who relish Paul’s atmospheric tales of Victorian serial killers, mad women in the attic, Dickensian underworld characters and eccentric Edwardian inventors will know what forbidden pleasures await them on this album which features several songs with an HP Lovecraft theme and one inspired by a tale by Edgar Allen Poe. In the past Paul has conceived his fanciful tales from his own imagination as if his lyrics were 19th century short stories, but for this album he drew on HP Lovecraft and Poe for several of the tracks.
Roland, who appeared at the Wave Gotik Treffen festival last year and at the Herbsnachte festival in Berlin in 2003 has long been associated with the goth movement, but as this album shows there are many more facets to this most enigmatic Englishman who was once managed by David Enthoven (manager of Roxy Music, ELP and T.Rex) and June Bolan (wife of Marc Bolan) and asked to collaborate with film composer Michael Nyman and members of the Velvet Underground. Roland, who wrote all the tracks and produced the album has painstakingly crafted a late 60s/early 70s retro soundscape conjured up by the imaginative use of mellotron, violin, flute, harpsichord and a Barrett era Pink Floyd-style organ.
The five tracks inspired by Lovecraft (‘Re-Animator’, ‘Charles Dexter Ward’, ‘Arkham’, ‘Abdul Alhazred’ [an instrumental sketch of the ‘mad Arab’ who discovered the ‘Necronomicon’] and the epic ‘Cthullu’ are rendered in a wryly pulp horror comic vein which evokes the psychedelic Sixties rather than straight-faced Goth. This is a theme echoed by the radio friendly ‘Swamp Girl’ which would have certainly wowed them down at the Whisky A Go Go had Roland been around at the time while the exotic, eastern flavoured mantra ‘Assassins’ blends acid-pop with Led Zeppelin. Elsewhere there are further unexpected delights in the darkly sardonic ‘Chain Gang’ which could be a sequel to Robert Johnson’s story of his deal with the devil at the Crossroads, ‘Pan’, a paen to the male libido which conjures up the spirit of Jethro Tull, Traffic and Family and ‘Taliesin’, a folk rock fable Fairport Convention would have been proud of. But the real highlights of this collection must surely be ‘Valdemar’, based on Poe’s tale of a dying man suspended between this world and the world beyond, and ‘Cthullu’ which closes the album in epic style.
“If pop music had existed in the 19th century, Roland would have been a star.â€
(Music Week, UK)
For discography and news visit www.paulroland.de and www.paulroland.net or contact: [email protected]. Samples www.cdbaby.com/cd/proland9 . ‘Re-Animator’ is released by Black Widow ( www.blackwidow.it ) and Syborgmusic ( www.syborgmusic.de )
Interview Database:
Click here to visit the brand-new "Paul Roland Interview-Database" - there you'll get access to many old and new interviews.
Record Label:
Record Label: Gaslight Records
Type of Label: Indie
