Roine Stolt is a well know name in the progressive rock scene. Everybody knows his work with The Flower Kings, Transatlantic, Kaipa, Kaipa Da Capo, Jon Anderson, Agents Of Mercy and his solo efforts. But sometimes people seems to forget that he was a rather unknown musician himself and looked up to all the great musicians that inspired him to become a musician. Therefore he was surprised when Merit Hemmingson give him a phone call one morning back in 1990. He was talking to one of the people that got him into playing music. You have to know that Merit Hemmingson (born 30 August 1940), is a Swedish musician and vocalist who is world famous in Sweden and far beyond. Besides singing, she is mainly a keyboard player and loves to play on the Hammond B3, M3 and the pipe organ. She became known in the late 1960s for her pop music arrangements of folk music groups. As a jazz musician, she has built up an enormous track record since the end of the 60s with a long series of albums. She probably just invited him for a cup of coffee and talked about maybe doing something together in the line of folk music. But then in 1993 she invited him to help produce an album with the pipe organ as the leading instrument. Well you might think that's the end of the story after not releasing any albums by Merit with a pipe organ for such a long time. Well you got it completely wrong. Here it is! Mother Earth Forever. More than thirty years later Merit released with the help of Roine the forgotten album after all! As you might have guessed, Mother Earth Forever is partly an old recording that Hemmingson and Stolt started in 1993. They revived it from the original mix and finally digitally transferred it from the master. At the time they gathered a group of fine players and spent a few weeks finding out how the pipe organ can meet drum machines, medieval wind instruments, saxophones, electric fuzzy guitars, assorted acoustic percussion and drums. Later on they added some new sound layers from playing on several instruments. All with the purpose of creating an unique sound. Well after hearing the entire album I can tell you that they created in many ways an unique sound. But does it sound original? Of course not! Which is of course nowadays not possible. And it is not needed to make it sound great. And it does sound great Mother Earth Forever. The album is a true progressive rock album with influences from The Flower Kings. I think there was no escape from that if you ask Roine Stolt to help you make an album. Does it matter? I guess not! As long as the compositions are strong and they are all the way throughout the entire album. Hemmingson composed only songs of a high musical level. Next to the influences of Roine Stolt and The Flower Kings I hear another influence. An influence which was also notable when Stolt started his career with Kaipa and as a solo artist. Namely the Dutch outfit Focus and mainly their guitarist at the time. The excellent Jan Akkerman. Maybe not so strange because most of the recordings date from the time when The Flower Kings were not even around or just started around 1994. In those days Stolt was probably influenced by one of the greatest bands coming from the Netherlands. The twelve songs on this album are mainly instrumental pieces of music which have sparse vocal contributions and are just wordless singing by Merit. She is using her voice as an instrument. And she does this perfectly and therefore you don't miss any real singers on the entire album. The strong guitar parts of Stolt and the excellent playing of Hemmingson on the many keyboards and pipe organ are just enough to enjoy it all the way. All in all it is easy to say that Mother Earth Forever was worth releasing after all those years on the shelf gathering dust. Great that Roine took the effort to make all the tapes dust free and finished off the recordings. The 67 years old Roine Stolt and the now 83 years old Merit Hemmingson can be very proud of what they accomplished together after having a cup of coffee together. Cheers! **** Henri Strik (edited by Tracy van Os van den Abeelen) Where to buy? |
