E.D.O. the Past Is A Foreign Country Progressive Voyages Review PV049
E.D.O. – The Past Is A Foreign Country Progressive Voyages Review PV049
The highly impresive sleeve to the album showing the Sea Forts in the Thames Estuary
Edo Sponnings is the keyboard player in long established Netherlands Progressive Rock Band Flamborough Head and this album, The Past Is A Foreign Country is his first solo album. The theme of the album is Post war western history from 1945 to 2025, the tale is told through 7 instrumental pieces of music and 2 bonus instrumental tracks.
This is a bold concept and the album is actually very well considered, produced and delivered by Edo, although one track had the input of drummer Davide Guido.
What greatly compliments this album is the incredibly informative background information that can be accessed via the QR code inside the album cover. This details the recordings that play during each track that add both depth and insight Into each track placing it in its historical context with the use of relevantly recorded news clips and speeches. This means you get to hear snippets of speeches from Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
The album starts with Wannsee which was where in 1942 senior Nazi officials met to discuss and implement their final solution to the Jewish question, their plan was to kill and eradicate all Jews in Europe. In̈ this track we hear Churchill, Eisenhower and Montgomery, we also hear Oppenheimer’s I am become death, the destroyer of worlds about the atomic bomb dropped on Japan that caused them to fully surrender to the Allies. A dreadful event but necessary to end the carnage that the war had caused and an opportunity to grow again in a different way.
The track starts with a wide keyboard wash and drums add a guitar line and then a flute part, All very symphonic sounding, then it switches to a German radio speech of Adolf Hitler in Berlin in 1939, after which it then switches to Churchill’s classic never surrender speech then changes to Oppenheimers Destroyer of worlds with sounds of the atomic bomb and a deep ponderous note and choral voices. This track is basically a history lesson in 5 minutes, it’s very interesting and gives you a sense of a world at a major crisis and point of change.
Next Track Stettin concerns itself with the cold war era of 1945 to 1963 when Germany was divided into East and West Germany, in this we feel the effects of the separation of the allied forces into the communist bloc and the west both with their different ideologies and views and lifestyles on in the west of freedom and the other in the east of suppression and oppression in direct and opposite ways of life.
The music is brisk and elegant in tone with great guitar work by Edo and strong keyboard work.
Track 3 is entitled Houston and this is about the Space Race of the 1960’s of which the culmination was Man walking on the moon in 1969. It also concerns itself with Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech about civil rights in America. The music here is largely upbeat in nature with a strong and strident synthesiser motif. It also has snatches of Nasa recordings including Neil Armstrong’s One small Step speech, the track closes on the downbeat moment of Nixon’s Watergate resignation.
Track 4 concerns itself with the1970’s years of discontent and strikes that plagued the United Kingdom, the track also includes Thatcher ’announcement of war with Argentina over their invasion of the Falkland Islands.
Track 5 takes us to Chernobyl and their nuclear reactor failure and subsequent fall out that led to the massive changes in Russia that resulted in an opening off the bastion and the breakdown and removal of the Berlin Wall.
This track is very gentle and the subtle use of acoustic guitar works really well indeed and the subsequent synthesiser parts are soft and gentle and seem to reflect new openness and world order emerging.
Track 6 Schengen refers to the events of the end of the 1980’s and the Serbian and Yugoslavian war, it also marks the changing world and the threat of Islamic terrorist’s as happened in 2001 and the credit crunch that affected the world in 2008 and Brexit that happened in 2015 when Britain voted to leave the European union, this track contains a snippet of Beethoven’s ode to joy playing in the background, Not really sure why as Brexit it was not a joyous result for many and indeed Britain is still deep the divided over that result and the ongoing issues that it allowed to surface as a result.
Final track is Mariupol which has lots of words from Donald Trump, Its boasts of his accomplishments whether real or imagined or not the point. It is instead about how this has all come to be set against a strong musical tone including those of bass drums, flute keyboards and guitar. The music is gentle and has a great tone to it, almost Triumphant at times, it does actually work really well for this track, of course Trump is a divisive character, his brutal and uncalled for rebuke of Vlodymer Zelensky is captured here in all its shame, With his rhetoric about being making America great Again is just the usual “weave “of half truths random unqualified thoughts and speculation that he espouses so often.
The album also has 2 bonus tracks, the first of these is Cathedral Green which has a soaring synth line along with flute and has an almost pastoral sound. This was originally featured on a1999 Mexican issued album, Cathedral Green is at Exeter Cathedral in Devon, it is a lovely track with a great sound and melody.
The second b9nus track is Pa Gata which was originally released by French label Musea, in which they paid tribute to various Swedish bands like Kaipa and Bo Hansen and the like, this track is an Atlas track from their 1979 Bla Vardog it is another gentle track with a strong organ presence throughout.
That’s it, the cover shows the Maunsell Sea forts in the English East Coast in the Thames estuary built in the during Ww2 as coastal defences. It’s striking image for a very strong album that shows how the past has shaped the future and how history seems to go in cycles and how we’ve gone from war to peace and are now at the point of the possibility of another war looming, Only time will tell.
This album is very definitely worthy of your consideration as it has great music and an intelligent and enlighten story to discover.
I heartily recommend it, The music is important and here you can experience and hear about the events that inspired it, Truly a fascinating and educational listening experience.
Info here: www.edoprog.bandcamp.com.
Author John Wenlock-Smith