The Closing Chronicles inspired by who?

[batmura]

This is still my favourite Nightingale album. It's his darkest and proggiest; I love the somewhat blurry sound of this record too. I think the opening song is still among Dan's greatest.

Anyway, I was wondering what everyone here thinks about the influences Dan may have had while writing and recording this album? It's still pretty much a solo record, but Dag did contribute to it adding his own spin. Also Dan, do you have any memories you'd like to share about this disc? Do you consider it among your more essential outputs?

Several critics have stated that the album bears a resemblance to Landberk. Now I've got two Landberk albums, both of which I like. And apart from the raw prog sound, I can't really seem to place the similarity. That said, I cannot compare the album to anyone whereas Dan's stuff Alive Again onwards have always been easier for me to describe, as I call them a mix of 80's hard rock, AOR, and some Marillion-esque prog.

Any thoughts?

 

[Dan Swanö]

Cool that you like it...Bits and pieces of it is really good, other pieces could have been editied here and there (some passages were edited down in lenght at the mastering in Stockholm..)

Some memories:

DEEP INSIDE OF NOWHERE was written on my Steinmann upright piano when I lived at Skolgatan in Örebro. I had just moved there and one morning I felt like writing something in a wierd key and G# came to mind. Since I am normally never messing about with the black keys, every chord that didn´t sound wierd felt like a revelation. Originally the song had a main guitar-riff that sounded a lot like a minor key version of Sweet home alabama (!!) luckily, I showed that riff too late to Dag when we did the original pre-production version of the song (only hours before we had to start recording the original version!!) The rest of the song was pretty much improvised and then knocked into shape later. I was still recording analog 16 track, so there was not much room for modern day editing and moving bits here and there. We settled on an arrangement with a bit more progressive touch, my brother added the riffy section in the middle. That one was 100% improvised when he recorded he bass and he had a hard time dubbing the guitars on that one I remember!! REVIVAL was written on a nylonstring Sigma on my kitchenfloor the night before we started recording. I just felt that the material I had assembled beforehand missed out on a really hardrocking song. Wrote itself in 10 minutes.
THOUGHTS FROM A STOLEN SOUL was pieced together and partly improvised in the studio. I had just bought a Roland XP10 and found the "vintage synth" bank and went nuts with all the arpeggiators (I was really into Gamma and Foreigners early stuff at the time) even though you can believe that the middle section starting with only bassy-keyboards are influenced by Rush (Around Signals) I swear to God, I had never really heard Rush back then. I discovered them later. My brother was in a state of denial with Rush at the time too, and had heard nothing after Hemispheres more than maybe once. Weird how that turned out, maybe one of the reasons why I fell head over heals in love with Rush a few summers later and lived and breathed their music around the clock (I even slept with "Grace under pressure" playing in the background for weeks!!!) Anyway. The chorus is "inspired" by a song from the swedish band Universe, kind of a subliminal tribute. Noone ever noticed!! The hammond and guitarleadsection is heavily inspired by AOR-days-Santana (Check out Marathon!! Kicks ass!!) "SO LONG" is originally a Unicorn song that I yet had to play to the guys. I pretty much decided on th spot that UNICORN had to die so I could steal this material to this album. Unciorn never died, but took off in a more commercial direction before we died in the summer of 2000. I love SO LONG, really emotional. The song itself is inspired by Marillion and a little bit from the David Gilmour "About Face" album and the ("Still I Wonder") addition to the title is a nod to the almighty Moxy!! STEAL THE MOON is an old song that started its life as a Indie rock song. I recorded a version with drummachine and cleanguitars with tons of FX on it. I felt the song was nice and I loved the riff. I presented it to Unicorn but the other two felt it was out of style, so when we realized the TCC album was a little bit short, I just said "I have one more" to Dag and we nailed it really fast. INTERMEZZO is an old Tom Nouga song. The original version is called FONTÄN (Fountain) and I loved it from the first moment and I really wanted this song to be on this album like an intermission....only pads and vocals and a heartbeat. There´s talk of revisiting the original arrangement with backwards bass (!!) and clean guitar but with the english lyrics. Maybe for a future re-recording album part II ALIVE AGAIN is another unfishined UNICORN song. I had the intro/verse/chorus/progpart/melody and after that Nouga came up with on of his most evil riffs on the the bass and we repeated that in absurdum and then finally bashing out some classic moments from the first album. The is was supposed to really "close" the concept. And in many was it did. Nightingale was never quite the same after this. The darkness have returned occationally on Side B of "I" but there is a special ambience here created by inferiour soundquality, sloppy drums, fresh & unrehearsed material and a tension between two brothers working together for the first time. And we were young!!

See ya

Dan

 

[Gurgelguff]

It´s a classic N.G album ! Lots of great songs

 

[Gurgelguff]

It´s a classic N.G album ! Lots of great songs

 

[karpsmom]

So classic it needed to be said twice

 

[Kenneth R.]

those ex-Unicorn tracks are so damn awesome!

 

[RickGSF]

Thoughts from a Stolen Soul is one of my favorite songs ever.

Period.

 

[Fuentealba]

So classic it needed to be said twice

hahah indeed! LOL

 

[Earthbound]

Thanks for all the info Dan!

TCC was the album that made me understand the greatness of Nightingale.
Steal the Moon!

 

[Demilich]

REVIVAL ... Wrote itself in 10 minutes.

Dan

Goddamn I am so fucking jealous of you

If I could write ANY type of song that didn't suck, let alone such a great tune as Revival, I could die a happy man right now.

 

[mattcira]

Tom Nouga is dead to me!!!!

 

[chrisdoig24k]

Goddamn I am so fucking jealous of you

If I could write ANY type of song that didn't suck, let alone such a great tune as Revival, I could die a happy man right now.

+1

Revival is one of my favourite NG tracks!