NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE TANGENT
Andy Tillison teams up with Jonas Reingold, Theo Travis, Luke Machin and Steve Roberts on latest.
The Tangent’s 10th album Proxy sees Andy Tillison in the mood for personal reflection. Written and recorded during a European tour, the follow-up to last year’s The Slow Rust Of Forgotten Machinery has no overarching concept, but a group of dovetailing themes.
“It’s got unchallenged optimism and some good old pessimism,” Tillison tells Prog. “The idea of ‘proxy’ could mean a lot of things. The first song is in the context of proxy war, hence the pawn on the album cover. Later, in a more personal song, I refer to the music I write as a proxy for who I want to be… rather than being it!
“There’s a couple of regrets, things I didn’t achieve. There’s another about a whole music scene I missed out on because I was being snobby about it!’”
He also explores the way people of his generation, who grew up in the 70s, react to the modern world. “We wanted the future so much, but now we’ve got to the future we get nostalgic about the past,” he says. “The 1970s were a very difficult time for a lot of people. And you could smoke in hospitals, which is shit.”
As ever, the band refuse to be limited in musical style, with Emerson Lake & Palmer, Chick Corea and Jamiroquai all referenced. Tillison chooses the first five minutes of The Adulthood Lie as the single he’d release, containing the key repeated lyric, ‘There’s still time.’
Proxy arrives on November 16 via InsideOut. For more, visit www.thetangent.org. MK