Mariane Faithful

This is one of the first Symphonic albums to come out of Germany. And it's nothing like TRIUMVIRAT or even NOVALIS for that matter.This is melancholic and plodding with plenty of synths and mellotron. There are basically two side long suites with the first side being divided into two parts…

Josephine raises a stained-glass lamp and shepherds us spelunking the depths of spirit in this four-part double album. Following the fame of her voice are choruses of winged entities (and a space shuttle) that ascend and descend a maze of spirituals: ritual prayers, blues laments, vestal hymns and jubilant benedictions. The edges of the natural world are revolving backdrops from which our narrator perches upon symbolic precipice or saunters desolate snow-blanched forest, exploring eternal themes of mortality and morality, beneath the moon and in occasional dialogue with a mysterious lord of love, an ambiguous mystical figure.

Vallotti and the composition of the Marian Antiphons for soprano, strings and continuo. The idea of exploring Francesco Antonio Vallotti’s works, more than three centuries after his birth, comes from the desire of returning to today’s world a small page of Music History which had hitherto remained unexplored. This will facilitate the rediscovery of a very fecund composer of sacred music, who was for a long time the Chapel Master in the Basilica del Santo in Padua. Vallotti is best known for his theoretical writings, but he was in fact a very productive composer of religious music. His works elicited the interest, admiration and enthusiasm of his contemporaries (and not only of them). However, the short-sighted Caecilian Reform of the late nineteenth century inopportunely stigmatized his music as “Baroque”, and thus worth despising.

Todd Rundgren considered 1966 the beginning of his professional musical career, largely because the Nazz formed around that time. As a celebration, he recorded Faithful. Presumably, Faithful celebrates the past and the future by juxtaposing a side of original pop material with a side of covers. Actually, "covers" isn't accurate – the six oldies that comprise the entirety of side one are re-creations, with Rundgren "faithfully" replicating the sound and feel of the Yardbirds ("Happenings Ten Years Time Ago"), Bob Dylan ("Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"), Jimi Hendrix ("If Six Was Nine"), the Beach Boys ("Good Vibrations") and the Beatles "("Rain," "Strawberry Fields Forever"). All of this is entertaining, to a certain extent, especially since it's remarkable how close Rundgren comes to duplicating the very feel of the originals.

Faithful Breath - Fading Beauty (1974) & Faithful Breath - Back On My Hill (1980).
Those connecting Faithful Breath from Bochum with hard rock are right as regards their later works. In the beginning, however, they played psychedelia, then, initiated by their keyboarder Manfred von Buttlar, symphonic rock dominated by Mellotron. Their first LP is considered to be their best work: "Fading Beauty", recorded at the end of 1973 and released as a private pressing in early 1974. Especially the long track "Tharsis", occupying an entire side of the LP, is a real masterpiece. Already in 1991, the LP was released as a CD in the U.S. As it was no longer available, however, a re-release was overdue, which has been made from the master tape. In the 32-page booklet, there is the usual detailed band history and discography as well as plenty of cover and label reproductions and photographs of the artists…