The Lubeck Heads

The Lubeck Heads are an International Virtual Progressive Rock band. Members are split between London UK and Seattle WA, and, amazingly, never ever play live together - since everything they produce is recorded separately, transmitted over the Internet and mixed together in a studio at a later stage.
It’s not always worked like that, though and The Lubeck Heads do share a long history of musical experimentation: the band originally formed in July 1993 in a rather brutal and desperate way, following the death of a close friend, Gaelle, a beautiful 17 year old girl, in a stupid car crash somewhere in Southern England.
Was it the need to express their grief in the strongest possible way, or simply a mean to pay tribute to Gaelle’s inspiring character, that brought Eric Benoist (vocals, piano and synths), Cyrille Gosselin (guitars), Renaud Poulizac (drums) and later, Benjamin Leray (Bass) together in some remote garage, lost in the misty fields of Northern Touraine, France?
After a short period of sheer musical chaos and rage, a Lubeckian sound finally emerged. Cold, romantic and experimental. Back then, it was a mix of hallucinated vocals, powerful pianos and synths, lyrical guitar solos, atmospheric drum wizardry and bass hypnosis. The band’s main influences were Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, King Crimson…but also Chopin, Beethoven and Rachmaninov…
And it worked.
They started performing in Tours, Angers, Le Mans, and Paris, singing apocalyptic poems such as “Fatal Mess”, “The Thief” or “As the Sun was Dead”, while the whole process culminated in the recording of their first studio album: “Longer Together” in 1998.
In April 1999 however, the band split up. The post “Longer Together” era had not been as creative as expected. Each member had their own musical vision and they were not going in the same direction. Soon after the split, Eric started a new life in the Financial District of London while Cyrille flew over to Seattle to become a successful Blues musician. Benjamin and Renaud also pursued their own musical careers and for 5 years, that was the end of the Lubeck Heads.
And yet…It felt like unfinished work.
In 2000, Eric wrote “Midnight Underground” after Anne, his wife, nearly got raped in the Parisian Metro. He then started working between 2001 and 2004 on 11 new songs based on Anne’s novel “Le bon grain et l’ivraie”, and put together the first draft of what would later become the “You or Another You” concept album.
Technology then made it simple for him and Cyrille, to get back together on the musical front. Powerful software, samplers, fast and cheap internet connection and increasingly realistic virtual instruments all made it easier for them to start working on the “You or another you” project. After 4 years of hard work, the album finally came out of the dark: more than 64 minutes of music across 12 original tracks, recorded in London, mixed and mastered in Seattle, manufactured in France and Spain – a truly international adventure… The Lubeck Heads are back with that dark sound of theirs, only with more control, more quality, more professionalism…They chose a more obvious and solid rhythmic approach, giving up some of the earlier drumming experiments, but certainly keeping the lyrical guitars and mysterious pianos to create a genuinely Lubeckian opus, which will no doubt be recognised as their most accomplished record yet.
The band is already working on a new project: “The seven mirrors” to be released in 2010. In the meantime, will you ever be able to see them perform live somewhere between London and Seattle? Well…Bear with them. They are working on it…
..