You have come across something new! Something exciting and awesomeness-exuding! I present to you Abodean Skye, a progressive rock project that presents fantastic science fiction and fantasy stories through dramatic music featuring great singers and complex arrangements.

Abodean Skye is the offshoot of my first project Purity, born in the summer of 2008 and featuring singers Will Shaw and Cosmin Aionita, chosen from each side of the world, and mixed into an adventurous attempt at telling the story of an android races’ odyssey in the song “Flowerbloom”, retelling the original Elfquest journey through heavy progressive epic “The World of Two Moons” and critiquing stagnation and the sinister possibilities of the information age in “The Flaw of Man”.

Taking that 3-month affair to the next level, I have begun a project called Abodean Skye. I’ve been working on this music for almost a year now, writing the songs, recording, finding singers. The project is now about three-quarters of the way done, with four epic-length songs recorded. I have a dream of Abodean Skye becoming more than just a “band”. I would like to mix everything from written stories to drawn art, but with the music at the center of it all.

Cast

Vocals:

Bogdan Vera (Purity, Abodean Skye)

Will Shaw (Athem)

Cosmin Aionita (9.7 Richter)

Ashavari Joshi (New talent!)

Mike Gorham (Tomorrow’s Outlook)

Instruments:

Bogdan Vera (Guitar, Synthesizer, Programming, Bass, Flutes, other)

Diana Miron  (Violin) (from the band Tiarra)

Stories

The album isn’t ready yet, but as I finish completion, I’d like to keep things updated, with samples and outtakes and ideas, and short stories, lyrics, etc.

The songs finished so far are:

The Dimming of The Day

The song features Will Shaw and Ashavari Joshi, and is about love and separation during times of war.

Enigmatic World

This song is inspired by the novel Ringworld by Larry Niven, and tells the story of an exploratory expedition on an alien space-borne monolith inhabited by primitive natives and lush with mysteries.

Desert Air

This song is very lightly inspired by the comic book series Elfquest (by Wendy and Richard Pini), and tells the story of a cold and emotionless being who loses his loved one to another, and finds himself trekking out into a burning desert, seeking death, only to find new life.

The Last Days

This song tells the story of how a human spacecraft carrying explorers returns to Earth in the 28th century only to find it ravaged by atomic fires and cold mechanical aliens.

Music

The music of Abodean Skye is a combination of cold, analog electronica, progressive rock, heavy metal and folk. Adding to this, Abodean Skye is also influenced by an elusive genre called filk, which mixes folk music with science fiction themes.

The songs go through varied atmospheres, from almost death metal-like to serene and almost silent to thick and crushing synthesizers to folksy acoustic guitar. They quickly go through emotions from happy to depressing to glorious (how can it not sound glorious with the Korg M1′s beautiful brass?).

The influences you are bound to encounter vary from Pink Floyd’s harmonies, to Jean Michel-Jarre, Vangelis’ and Tangerine Dream’s pulsing synthesizers to Opeth’s crushing riffage. Overall, it will be impossible to tell what decade of rock the music belongs to, because it grooves like the 60′s, pulsates like the 70′s, rocks like the 80′s, gets dramatic like the 90′s and crushes like the 00′s!

Questions

Q: When is the album going to be released?

A: When it’s done, hopefully this Winter, but you don’t have to wait, there will be musical samples and stories and maybe even collaborations, as well as tutorials and sneak peaks into production.

Q: Is it any good?

A: Probably. See, every kid with a computer can make a rock opera in his bedroom now, but this is more than just a part time hobby. This is something I have devoted a lot of my time and energy into, searching for quality singers and recording the complicated music (recording bass, guitar, drums and vocals for a pop rock track may be simple, but try 10 layers of synthesizers, filtered drums, 4 vocalists singing at the same time in counterpoint with different melodies and harmonizing guitars).

Q: Hey man, this reminds me of Avantasia, Ayreon and Andrew Lloyd Webber!

A: While all of those are influences (and GREAT MUSIC), and even though Abodean features multiple singers, the music is different, the influences are different and the ideas are different. The key point of Abodean Skye is the focus on telling stories reminiscent of hard sci-fi, while putting as little importance as possible on being commercial or “easy listening”. I’m not planning to make a living out of this (wouldn’t hurt though ). I’m studying Music and Audio Technology at Bournemouth University, to become a producer, so I hope to never have to commercialize Abodean Skye. Good music and stories are where it’s at.

Q: Why do you need a stupid blog for your band?

A: I’m going to use this as a public outlet, and if the project takes off, I want to mix in video, prose, poetry, drawn art, 3d art and music, where people can collaborate and come up with new ideas and basically feed their minds. Abodean Skye is not a “band” at all. I want it to be a community.

Q: Are you guys coming to *insert city here*?

A: Abodean doesn’t tour yet. Maybe some day, or with a side project.

Q: IT SUCKS!!!!

A: OH NOES!

Q: Oh my God, this is SO awesome!!!

A: YAAAY!

Q: What label is going to release Abodean’s album?

A: I don’t know yet. A label or two have already said they are interested, but as I said, I have no real interest in turning this into a regular band. I’d much rather just have it function as a website or community. That said, I’m not completely ruling out a label, it’s just too early to decide yet.

Q: tl;dr

A: OH NOES!!!

Q: Are you up for artistic/promotional collaboration?

A: Sure!

You can e-mail any ideas or suggestions at all to me at metabogy@yahoo.com. I’m really busy working on the album now but there’s plenty of time (assuming I don’t die suddenly in some terrible accident involving giant flying razor blades).

Keep an eye on this blog, you will find more data and goodies here, and also visit

http://www.youtube.com/user/metabog

for my youtube channel and

http://www.myspace.com/puritycontrolband

for the old Purity myspace with the old songs.

Cheers!

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