Tag: roine stolt

Playlists

(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 44: Back On The New (To Me) Beat

This time next week I’ll be on a plane to an island where I will do nothing but lay on the beach with a book, eat, and repeat. It’s all that’s on my mind (other than actively trying to ignore work which is of course the exactly opposite of actually not thinking about work), so a quick playlist of the new music that’s come through the door in the past week. I really have a problem, but it ain’t the worst one to have right now, you know? So I’ll count myself very lucky and just get on to the tunes.

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Playlists

(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 4: This Is Why (Physical Media)

I have no idea what I did, but somehow I screwed up my Apple Music. I was uploading some stuff I bought from Bandcamp (a bunch of albums from the Italian prog band Celeste)and now iCloud won’t update my library and on my desktop all the music I loaded from streaming is gone. It’s still there on my iPhone and iPad, so I know it’s just a syncing issue, but it’s frustrating all the same because I had a different theme in mind for this week’s (Un)Focused Definition playlist.

But since that fell through the cracks, we’re going to do a playlist featuring tracks from some (more) recent vinyl acquisitions. What can I say? I have a problem, and it’s an addiction I have no desire to knock. So let’s get into it, starting with a preview of the next review and series, shall we?

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roine stolt - the flower king
Vinyl

Roine Stolt: The Flower King (1994)

“We believe in the light, we believe in love, every precious, little thing.

We believe you can still surrender; you can serve the Flower King.”

It’s there, in those two lines and the music that captures them that you can see the whole of The Flower Kings spring to life. But it’s not a Flower Kings album, it’s from the 1994 solo album from Roine Stolt titled The Flower King. There were certainly albums before this one: coming to prominence as a 17-year old guitar phenom with the Swedish progressive unit Kaipa in the mid 70s; a quick pair of albums as Fantasia (or Roine Stolt’s Fantasia); even two solo albums before the future congeals in this fantastic slab of progressive rock. So before jumping into the band proper, I thought it only fitting – especially since I was able to grab one of the limited edition first vinyl pressing of the album (it was only CD and digital before this year) – that we talk about the ür Flower Kings if I may borrow liberally from Harold Bloom. Whether you consider it part of the discography or not it’s a killer album, so let’s dig in.

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