What Are You Listening To?

[Ruby]

I’ve been listening to Woolly Wolstenholme’s solo stuff. His first release was titled Maestoso and that later became the name under which he recorded. There are inklings of Barclay James Harvest here and there in his music which is hardly surprising since he was a core member of that group, but on the whole, he sounds fairly definite and decided in the direction he took.

I was curious about the word maestoso so looked up the definition which musically speaking is … “a movement or passage marked to be performed in a majestic manner”. There’s very little of his work available to be streamed on the apps that I can access, so I’ve been dipping in and out of this albums where there are clips available on YT. Three seem to stand out, One Drop in a Dry World, Grim, and Caterwauling (which I managed to listen to in full); the first two are concept albums. I think he was a brilliant lyricist and I would look for his albums. A troubled soul who felt things very deeply which is so apparent in his music. Why is genius so often linked to the deepest and darkest depression?

This clip is a bit messy for the first two and a half minutes and comprises the opening track to Caterwauling which is a bit weird, after which it then moves into “Soldier of Fortunue” which is well worth it, eventually, in my opinion. It starts and ends in chaos, and there is a point to that ...

[video=youtube;pScRdkJdyv4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pScRdkJdyv4[/video]