I Am The Manic Whale + IT

A return to the 1865 for the hugely popular ‘I am the Manic Whale’ along with musician and digital artist Colin Masson will be using projection screens to augment their shows

I Am The Manic Whale are unashamedly a progressive rock band. Whilst making similar timbral choices to many of the great progressive artists, particularly Genesis, Big Big Train, Spock’s Beard and Neal Morse, I Am The Manic Whale is also able to bring something new to the table. Their intelligent thoughtful lyrics touch on a range of unusual and interesting subjects from a fresh modern perspective; from science fiction to the history of printing, from the decay of a derelict swimming pool to the mobile artistic and engineering creations of Dutch artist Theo Jansen, known as Strandbeests.

History

Michael and David met at secondary school and have been making music together in various guises for over 20 years. They met Ben a few years later and John relatively recently. The first album, Everything Beautiful In Time was released in December 2015. Since then the band have undertaken a string of live performances, which have been very well received. Their second album, Gathering The Waters was released in October 2017 and in April 2020 they released their third album, Things Unseen.

Members 

Ben Hartley: drum kit, percussion, vocals Michael Whiteman: bass guitar, bass pedals, 12 strings guitars, vocals John Murphy: keyboards, murphatron, vocals David Addis: acoustic, classical and electric guitars, vocals

https://www.iamthemanicwhale.com/

IT

Beginning life as a psychedelic, multi-media group, IT is a band with a colossal sound that shakes the bones, with a barrage of images that feeds the mind. IT’s sound fuses the classic melodies of prog rock’s past with a passion and intensity usually only found in punk or metal bands. Politics, religion, war and sexuality all come under the band’s lens for critical examination. Lyrics are intelligent, challenging and occasionally darkly humorous. The bottom line is that the IT experience will inform your thinking, feelings and memory long after the last notes have ended.

IT formed in 1994 when Nick Jackson recorded and produced the band’s first full length album The Stranger Inside the Self. This was also when the band first began using multimedia during live shows with the inclusion of short films playing behind the group on stage. The band followed this up with the album Two Worlds in early January 1995.

The band’s third album, Over & Out, was released on June 21st 2002. It was created as a concept with a story line and was performed by IT live in its entirety accompanied by projected visual montages created by Nick Jackson. In 2004 IT began to redefine itself as the band line-up grew and become more permanent, particularly with the addition of Andy Rowberry on lead guitar. He also now contributes to a lot of the song-writing alongside Nick Jackson.

The fourth album Departure was released in July 2009 to critical acclaim with the accompanying bonus DVD giving an indication of the powerful onstage visuals that had by now become an integral part of the IT experience.

There then followed something of a hiatus whilst the band formulated the ideas that would eventually become…This explores themes of austerity, inequality and an uncertain future for younger generations. The CD comprises 10 brand new tracks and was released in March 2017.  The global official release date was 01st March 2017 via the Progressive Gears Records label in both digital and physical formats to universal acclaim leading to a Limelight feature in Prog Magazine (October 2017).

After a 4 years hiatus, the band returned to the stage with a stunning performance at Progtoberfest in London on 29th October 2017 followed up with more of the same at the inaugural Fusion Festival in March 2018 and a series of acclaimed gigs that year culminating in a nomination in the Prog Mag Awards.

2019 saw the band put on a stunning show at the first PGR Presents event – headlined by Zal Cleminson’s Sin’Dogs – at Warehouse23 in Wakefield (March) followed by successful shows in Belgium and Holland with Burntfield and Naryan (April). The upshot of this was an invitation to appear at ProgDreams (September) at the famous Boerderij Cultuurpodium in Zoetermeer where the band played a rousing set that won over an appreciative audience.

This latter event was recorded and released in November 2020 as a CD/DVD.

https://itband.tv/