Tides Of Nebula – In Concert At La Scène Michelet, Nantes, France – October 9, 2019 – Soundboard –
Sticking around Europe this week for a blast from Warsaw via Nantes. Tides From Nebula, live at La Scène Michelet, Nantes, France recorded this past October. Hardcore Space from Warsaw – not that you’d naturally assume it couldn’t come from Poland, it’s just that Eastern Europe hasn’t been all that well represented in the current music scene. Here’s a good reason not to ignore them.
A little background on them, via the Polish Culture website which you might find pretty handy:
Tides from Nebula was formed in early 2008 in Warsaw. From the beginning, its line-up consisted of Maciej Karbowski (guitar and keyboards), Tomasz Stołowski (drums), Adam Waleszyński (guitar) and Przemek Węgłowski (bass).
Prior to Tides From Nebula, Karbowski and Stołowski played together in another band, as did Waleszyński and Węgłowski. “We rubbed shoulders in many clubs, at various festivals and concerts but we never met ‘officially'”, recalls Waleszyński in an interview. Eventually, they connected through the internet.
Their music could be described as rock, if it were not for the fact that they have never needed a vocalist. Tides from Nebula willingly points to ambient music as a source of inspiration, however, it is dynamicity and vividness that are most important in their compositions. Certainly, some of the stylistic influences which the band draws on are Mogwai and Sigur Ros – emotional guitar landscapes interspersed with tranquil fragments of intricately woven melodies. The musicians also declare an admiration for bands such as Pelican, Isis, Deftones, Radiohead, and even M83.
Their music is filled with melancholy and a kind of delight and curiosity about the world. If Tides From Nebula’s music was used in a film, it would be a documentary about a place beyond humanity’s reach, pristine like a desert or the depths of the ocean. Even before their first album was released, Maciej Karbowski said in an interview:
We are very much interested in the subject matter of space, but also in the natural environment – sea, vegetation, etc. We believe that the name of our group reflects the music and atmosphere of our compositions.
Tides From Nebula quickly gained a reputation as a great concert group among journalists as well as fans of heavy music, which was evinced by their wins at competitions for young bands in 2009: Neuro Music as part of Asymmetry Festival and Before Party as part of KnockOut Festival.After the release of their debut album Aura in May 2009, the band toured Poland alongside Caspian and Irish group God Is An Astronaut. In the same year, they managed to set off on their first European tour. These days, Tides From Nebula performs in clubs across Europe as the main star. Invitations come not only from Germany and Benelux, where they have have often performed before, but even from Moscow and Sofia, where their fans outnumbered the available tickets.
The band invited Zbigniew Preisner to produce their second album Earthshine, and they chose a remote location in the mountains as their studio to work on compositions. It resulted in music with layered arrangements, more space and less of the untamed energy that dominated Aura. They later explained that at the time, it was caused by a lack of a producer. Therefore, several years after the original release, Aura was reissued in a new mix mastered by Szymon Czech.
After the release of their second album Tides from Nebula, together with members of the band Blindead, formed an orchestra which performed at the Off Festival in Katowice. Their third album Eternal Movement was produced by Christer Andre Cederber, a collaborator of Anathema. The compositions got shortened, but were perhaps even more sublime than before. The band drew on art-rock patents, used electronics in an extended manner, and on the other hand, referred to the Coldplay’s debut album. It was distributed internationally in Europe as well as in the US.
In August 2014, Tides From Nebula released Live Sessions, a collection of songs recorded in the rehearsal room. In autumn, as part of a subsequent tour (the longest in the history of the band), Tides From Nebula went to India, where they performed at the Shiva Squad Festival and at National Bike Week, which took place on the Formula 1 circuit in Greater Noida in the New Delhi region. In Russia and Romania they performed before a full house.
Author: Jacek Świąder, April 2015, transl. GS, April 2015
Okay – no excuses – crank this one up and get horizontal.
