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Trollheart · 07-18-2011, 05:17 PM

Babylon --- Ten --- 2000 (Frontiers)

I like concept albums. I've featured one or two here over the last few months. But then again, it's always helpful to understand the concept, and though I love this album, I find it very hard to tie down the actual story, and my internet searches have not helped (Wikipedia, how could you?!), leaving me with a basic idea of the concept, but not the whole thing. Sadly, the songs on the album don't offer much help in contextualising the plot either; though some obviously refer to and in some cases move the plot along, others appear just to be random songs. Nevertheless, this (admittedly big) problem aside, I find “Babylon” to be one of the premier Ten albums I have listened to.

For those who don't know who Ten are, they're a hard-rock/melodic rock/AOR band formed in Manchester in the mid-nineties by vocalist and frontman Gary Hughes and guitarist Vinny Burns. I have featured Hughes' solo meisterwerk, “Once and future king”, a kind of rock opera based around the Arthurian legend, early on in my journal, so if you end up liking this album go back and check his double-album out. Ten are generally lesser-known, and though they pop up from time to time in mags like Classic Rock presents AOR, you won't generally see them on the front page of, say, NME (is that still going?) or even Rolling Stone. Being somewhat unknown does not, however, necessarily translate into mediocrity, and to my mind, Ten have the quality, the passion and the musical ability that should have made them by now household names. But so it goes.

“Babylon” is their fifth album, and is, as I say, a concept, which is of a tragic love story set in the future. How far, I don't know, but it must be at least a hundred years on, as either the Earth, or a colony called Babylon, is protected from outside forces by a shield called the Dome, and referred to in the opening song. The story concerns a worker at the huge Cryotech Industries research facility called Lex, and his love for a woman who ends up being murdered. (Disclaimer: I am largely shooting in the dark here, as like I said above, hard facts and information on the story are tough to get, and so I am extrapolating from what I have gleaned from the songs and the links on the album, and tried my best to piece together the story. I may have got it wrong, and if any other Ten fan reading this has more insight, do please let me know.)

The album is a mix of power rockers and some beautiful ballads, the latter of which are really Gary Hughes' forte. Throughout the album, the narrative is maintained and moved along by the device of radio announcements and recordings from the Cryotech labs. The album opens up with the announcer, who works for Meridian, presumably the state radio station, as he refers to it as ”Meridian: the Voice of Babylon”, wrapping up the news bulletin, and the opening track “The Stranger” powers right in. It's introduced on a squealing keyboard line, then the guitars punch in, and the song gets going. It seems to be setting the scene, as Hughes sings of looking for ”A better life, outside the tomb.” He also mentions “carbon copies”, possibly alluding to clones, which it seems may form a large part of the workforce at, or on, Babylon. The song is a good rocker, solid, very catchy and with some great guitar from both Burns and John Halliwell. Hughes' voice sings out loud and clear as he paints a picture of discontent, a feeling of being trapped, and a yearning for a better life.

It's quite a long song, over seven minutes, the longest on the album though in fairness there are few tracks on this under four minutes, and not that many under five. As “The Stranger” comes to an abrupt, guitar-shredding halt, we hear the voice of the Cryotech Industries' computer as someone (presumably the hero, Lex) logs in to his workstation. The computer however only recognises him as “327”, lending further weight to the possibility that there are many clones of Lex, and other people, working here. The next track is another hard rocker: “Barricade” continues where the previous track left off, the vocals higher in the mix this time, and a nice bass line carrying parts of the song. This would appear to be the point at which Lex/327 meets his lover, and it's mostly a love song, or possibly more precisely a lust song as he realises ”I've seen the lightning/ Now I'm waiting for the thunder/ For I'm imprisoned by the spell/ She has me under.” Great guitar work again here, in fact the keyboards take a real backseat to allow Vinny and John to battle it out ---- the smell of burning fretboards is everywhere!

Another sudden end to this song and we're into the first slow song, though not quite a ballad. “Give in this time” is mid-paced (yeah, I love using that phrase, don't I?) and a very commercial song, just screams out for airplay, which it never got. Ten really display their AOR credentials here, and raise the bar with the first proper ballad, “Love became the law”, a dark, moody piece carried on heavy keyboards courtesy of the legendary Don Airey. The drumwork of Greg Morgan should not be understated here, either, as it really adds to the atmosphere of what could have been a sweet, sugary ballad, but comes across as more a song of defiance and perhaps forlorn hope.

We're back rockin' then with “The heat”, with some great guitar solos and again a really catchy chorus. (Sidenote: calling your band Ten is not a good idea. When searching for information, particularly on lyrical content, the term is too common to yield proper results. I kept getting links to Ten by Pearl Jam, the Ten best songs, and so on. VERY hard to research, so forgive the dearth of information and the possibly totally incorrect conclusions and observations here, but I had little to go on. They don't even have an offical website, or if they do, it's lost in the Web...)

Back to the story though, and the Voice of Meridian informs us that a young woman who worked for Cryotech has been found dead, and police are treating the death as murder. Her name is Jen Jarrak, and I can only assume that she is Lex's lover. This is borne out by the inclusion of the next ballad, the first true one really, the stunning “Silent rain”, as Lex mourns the loss of his woman. It's a powerful song, with some great lines --- ”There was once a time/ When true love drew man and woman together” --- hinting that relationships are perhaps less based on love in this city/planet of the future, and ”We would prove we were more/ Than just antoher fairytale.” Great work on the piano here by Airey really gives the song proper heart, really tugs at the emotions.

“Timeless”, up next, is a huge slice of proto-rock, a snarling beast that I would think is meant to put into words and music the feelings of Lex as he faces life without Jen. ”All cried out and raw inside/ I lie awake at night and wonder why/ Someone tore the miracle from my life.” It's clear Lex is determined to get to the truth about Jen's killing, and the somewhat erratic keyboards and wild guitar on this track underline his perhaps fracturing state of mind. In this state he decides to go to work, and set a plan in motion that could be seen as insane, if indeed I am right in my assumption that he is trying to create a clone of Jen from the database at Cryotech.

“Black hearted woman” is okay, but nothing special, and if he is trying to recreate Jen then I can't imagine why Lex refers to her in this way, unless Jen is NOT the lover, and was in fact instrumental in her murder? Hard to say, when there's no actual record of the plot to confirm or correct your suspicions. Doesn't spoil the enjoyment of the album, but I would like to know at some point if I've got it right or not. Anyhow, I would probably put this track as the weakest on the album. It IS good, just not as good as the others on the album, and I really don't see how it fits into the storyline.

We then hear the computer guiding Lex through what is obviously an illegal operation, to create a “holosuite disc” which he calls “Angel”, presumably the clone he is trying to create of his lover. We're then taken into the heaviest track on the album, where Greg Morgan really gets to hammer those drums, and Ten get as close to thrash metal as any AOR band I have ever heard! “Thunder in Heaven” is exactly that, heavy rock thunder, and it absolutely gallops along on smoking guitar and frenetic keyboard. It's a powerful track, and you feel fairly exhausted when it hammers to a close, but the best has been saved for last.

The next announcement tells us that two sons of the founder of Cryotech have been killed, and we can probably assume from this that Lex, having found out that Jen had been murdered by them, or on their orders, possibly for having an illicit love affair, killed them. The Voice of Meridian notes that “this brings the recent spate of killings at Cryotech to three.” But, prior to this, there had only been one murder, and one murder can't possibly be described as a spate. Hmm. As the album comes to an end, Lex enters the holosuite at Cryotech --- interestingly, the computer no longer calls him “327”, but Lex --- and is reunited, digitally, with his dead lover, leading to the heart-rending conclusion.

The album closes on without question one of the most beautiful, heartfelt, emotional and powerful ballads I have ever heard in my life. “Valentine” is carried on a mournful piano line, while Hughes outdoes himself on vocals, wringing every last drop of emotion out of the lyric: ”So let the world lament/ This precious time we spent/ Stars that came and went.../ Eternal requiem/ I'll never find the strength/ To love like this again.” The track could probably have gone through on piano and vocal only, but then the drums kick in and the guitars of Vinny Burns and John Halliwell provide a final, tortured solo that absolutely lifts this track to the realms of ballad heaven, and it closes as it began, on the lonely piano as Lex is left to his fate.

I just would love to know if I've interpreted the story correctly, but whether I have or not, this is one album that really deserves to have more people know about it, and listen to it. It still for me stands as one of Ten's best efforts, with some truly excellent tracks and great examples of a band who were at the top of their game, but just never got the break they deserved. Write them off as another AOR band if you will, call them overrated or whatever you like, but do me a favour first: click the link below and listen to this album. It may just surprise you.

TRACKLISTING

1. The Stranger
2. Barricade
3. Give in this time
4. Love became the law
5. The heat
6. Silent rain
7. Timeless
8. Black hearted woman
9. Thunder in Heaven
10. Valentine

Suggested further listening: “X” (also called “Self-titled”), “The name of the rose”, “Return to Evermore”, “The robe”, “Spellbound”, “The twilight chronicles”, “Far beyond the world”. I have not yet listened to their new one, “Stormwarning”, but I bet it's great. Oh, and dont' forget Gary Hughes' “Once and future king”...

07-18-2011, 05:17 PM	#84 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	Babylon --- Ten --- 2000 (Frontiers) I like concept albums. I've featured one or two here over the last few months. But then again, it's always helpful to understand the concept, and though I love this album, I find it very hard to tie down the actual story, and my internet searches have not helped (Wikipedia, how could you?!), leaving me with a basic idea of the concept, but not the whole thing. Sadly, the songs on the album don't offer much help in contextualising the plot either; though some obviously refer to and in some cases move the plot along, others appear just to be random songs. Nevertheless, this (admittedly big) problem aside, I find “Babylon” to be one of the premier Ten albums I have listened to. For those who don't know who Ten are, they're a hard-rock/melodic rock/AOR band formed in Manchester in the mid-nineties by vocalist and frontman Gary Hughes and guitarist Vinny Burns. I have featured Hughes' solo meisterwerk, “Once and future king”, a kind of rock opera based around the Arthurian legend, early on in my journal, so if you end up liking this album go back and check his double-album out. Ten are generally lesser-known, and though they pop up from time to time in mags like Classic Rock presents AOR, you won't generally see them on the front page of, say, NME (is that still going?) or even Rolling Stone. Being somewhat unknown does not, however, necessarily translate into mediocrity, and to my mind, Ten have the quality, the passion and the musical ability that should have made them by now household names. But so it goes. “Babylon” is their fifth album, and is, as I say, a concept, which is of a tragic love story set in the future. How far, I don't know, but it must be at least a hundred years on, as either the Earth, or a colony called Babylon, is protected from outside forces by a shield called the Dome, and referred to in the opening song. The story concerns a worker at the huge Cryotech Industries research facility called Lex, and his love for a woman who ends up being murdered. (Disclaimer: I am largely shooting in the dark here, as like I said above, hard facts and information on the story are tough to get, and so I am extrapolating from what I have gleaned from the songs and the links on the album, and tried my best to piece together the story. I may have got it wrong, and if any other Ten fan reading this has more insight, do please let me know.) The album is a mix of power rockers and some beautiful ballads, the latter of which are really Gary Hughes' forte. Throughout the album, the narrative is maintained and moved along by the device of radio announcements and recordings from the Cryotech labs. The album opens up with the announcer, who works for Meridian, presumably the state radio station, as he refers to it as ”Meridian: the Voice of Babylon”, wrapping up the news bulletin, and the opening track “The Stranger” powers right in. It's introduced on a squealing keyboard line, then the guitars punch in, and the song gets going. It seems to be setting the scene, as Hughes sings of looking for ”A better life, outside the tomb.” He also mentions “carbon copies”, possibly alluding to clones, which it seems may form a large part of the workforce at, or on, Babylon. The song is a good rocker, solid, very catchy and with some great guitar from both Burns and John Halliwell. Hughes' voice sings out loud and clear as he paints a picture of discontent, a feeling of being trapped, and a yearning for a better life. It's quite a long song, over seven minutes, the longest on the album though in fairness there are few tracks on this under four minutes, and not that many under five. As “The Stranger” comes to an abrupt, guitar-shredding halt, we hear the voice of the Cryotech Industries' computer as someone (presumably the hero, Lex) logs in to his workstation. The computer however only recognises him as “327”, lending further weight to the possibility that there are many clones of Lex, and other people, working here. The next track is another hard rocker: “Barricade” continues where the previous track left off, the vocals higher in the mix this time, and a nice bass line carrying parts of the song. This would appear to be the point at which Lex/327 meets his lover, and it's mostly a love song, or possibly more precisely a lust song as he realises ”I've seen the lightning/ Now I'm waiting for the thunder/ For I'm imprisoned by the spell/ She has me under.” Great guitar work again here, in fact the keyboards take a real backseat to allow Vinny and John to battle it out ---- the smell of burning fretboards is everywhere! Another sudden end to this song and we're into the first slow song, though not quite a ballad. “Give in this time” is mid-paced (yeah, I love using that phrase, don't I?) and a very commercial song, just screams out for airplay, which it never got. Ten really display their AOR credentials here, and raise the bar with the first proper ballad, “Love became the law”, a dark, moody piece carried on heavy keyboards courtesy of the legendary Don Airey. The drumwork of Greg Morgan should not be understated here, either, as it really adds to the atmosphere of what could have been a sweet, sugary ballad, but comes across as more a song of defiance and perhaps forlorn hope. We're back rockin' then with “The heat”, with some great guitar solos and again a really catchy chorus. (Sidenote: calling your band Ten is not a good idea. When searching for information, particularly on lyrical content, the term is too common to yield proper results. I kept getting links to Ten by Pearl Jam, the Ten best songs, and so on. VERY hard to research, so forgive the dearth of information and the possibly totally incorrect conclusions and observations here, but I had little to go on. They don't even have an offical website, or if they do, it's lost in the Web...) Back to the story though, and the Voice of Meridian informs us that a young woman who worked for Cryotech has been found dead, and police are treating the death as murder. Her name is Jen Jarrak, and I can only assume that she is Lex's lover. This is borne out by the inclusion of the next ballad, the first true one really, the stunning “Silent rain”, as Lex mourns the loss of his woman. It's a powerful song, with some great lines --- ”There was once a time/ When true love drew man and woman together” --- hinting that relationships are perhaps less based on love in this city/planet of the future, and ”We would prove we were more/ Than just antoher fairytale.” Great work on the piano here by Airey really gives the song proper heart, really tugs at the emotions. “Timeless”, up next, is a huge slice of proto-rock, a snarling beast that I would think is meant to put into words and music the feelings of Lex as he faces life without Jen. ”All cried out and raw inside/ I lie awake at night and wonder why/ Someone tore the miracle from my life.” It's clear Lex is determined to get to the truth about Jen's killing, and the somewhat erratic keyboards and wild guitar on this track underline his perhaps fracturing state of mind. In this state he decides to go to work, and set a plan in motion that could be seen as insane, if indeed I am right in my assumption that he is trying to create a clone of Jen from the database at Cryotech. “Black hearted woman” is okay, but nothing special, and if he is trying to recreate Jen then I can't imagine why Lex refers to her in this way, unless Jen is NOT the lover, and was in fact instrumental in her murder? Hard to say, when there's no actual record of the plot to confirm or correct your suspicions. Doesn't spoil the enjoyment of the album, but I would like to know at some point if I've got it right or not. Anyhow, I would probably put this track as the weakest on the album. It IS good, just not as good as the others on the album, and I really don't see how it fits into the storyline. We then hear the computer guiding Lex through what is obviously an illegal operation, to create a “holosuite disc” which he calls “Angel”, presumably the clone he is trying to create of his lover. We're then taken into the heaviest track on the album, where Greg Morgan really gets to hammer those drums, and Ten get as close to thrash metal as any AOR band I have ever heard! “Thunder in Heaven” is exactly that, heavy rock thunder, and it absolutely gallops along on smoking guitar and frenetic keyboard. It's a powerful track, and you feel fairly exhausted when it hammers to a close, but the best has been saved for last. The next announcement tells us that two sons of the founder of Cryotech have been killed, and we can probably assume from this that Lex, having found out that Jen had been murdered by them, or on their orders, possibly for having an illicit love affair, killed them. The Voice of Meridian notes that “this brings the recent spate of killings at Cryotech to three.” But, prior to this, there had only been one murder, and one murder can't possibly be described as a spate. Hmm. As the album comes to an end, Lex enters the holosuite at Cryotech --- interestingly, the computer no longer calls him “327”, but Lex --- and is reunited, digitally, with his dead lover, leading to the heart-rending conclusion. The album closes on without question one of the most beautiful, heartfelt, emotional and powerful ballads I have ever heard in my life. “Valentine” is carried on a mournful piano line, while Hughes outdoes himself on vocals, wringing every last drop of emotion out of the lyric: ”So let the world lament/ This precious time we spent/ Stars that came and went.../ Eternal requiem/ I'll never find the strength/ To love like this again.” The track could probably have gone through on piano and vocal only, but then the drums kick in and the guitars of Vinny Burns and John Halliwell provide a final, tortured solo that absolutely lifts this track to the realms of ballad heaven, and it closes as it began, on the lonely piano as Lex is left to his fate. I just would love to know if I've interpreted the story correctly, but whether I have or not, this is one album that really deserves to have more people know about it, and listen to it. It still for me stands as one of Ten's best efforts, with some truly excellent tracks and great examples of a band who were at the top of their game, but just never got the break they deserved. Write them off as another AOR band if you will, call them overrated or whatever you like, but do me a favour first: click the link below and listen to this album. It may just surprise you. TRACKLISTING 1. The Stranger 2. Barricade 3. Give in this time 4. Love became the law 5. The heat 6. Silent rain 7. Timeless 8. Black hearted woman 9. Thunder in Heaven 10. Valentine Suggested further listening: “X” (also called “Self-titled”), “The name of the rose”, “Return to Evermore”, “The robe”, “Spellbound”, “The twilight chronicles”, “Far beyond the world”. I have not yet listened to their new one, “Stormwarning”, but I bet it's great. Oh, and dont' forget Gary Hughes' “Once and future king”... __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018 Last edited by Trollheart; 11-07-2012 at 05:37 PM.