Picture Palace Music - Midsummer (2010)

Picture Palace Music is an electronic music band from Berlin, Germany, the city where serious electronic music was born. Thorsten "Q" Quaeschning, keyboardplayer in Tangerine Dream, is head of the project. The main idea of the group that was founded in 2003 is to reproduce the musical dynamic and experiments of old live accompaniment for silent movies and to give them a modern soundtrack with nowadays-technical options. This shows that the old silent movies are not mouldy: they are timeless and fascinating! The music is inspired by more than eighty years old silent movies. Take a deep trip into a mystical world of sounds! Picture Palace Music already has quite a number of releases out, some only available as download but also some on the Manikin electronic music label from Berlin. "Midsummer" is the first one that was released on Groove Unlimited. The theme behind the album is "music for sound divers and baptism-ceremonies". The band is celebrating a wonderful summer sun-worshipping the solstice and the associated famous white nights and blue hours. Vuvuzelas (remember those from the Word Championship soccer?) as an essential part of this particular summer will be heard as well as the beautiful noise of sound-stones. So join the band having a trip through the whole gamut of emotions regarding/reflecting this eventful year - 2010. And a band it is. Apart from Thorsten "Q" the band consists of Sacha Beator (keyboards, who also does a lot of composing), Djirre and Stephen Mortimer on guitars, Vincent Novak on drums and Juergen Heidemann on various instruments and sounds. Of course, with a man like "Q" in the band, a comparison can be made with the music of Tangerine Dream. But Picture Palace Music is more than that: melodically, lively, rocky and even at some cases progressive ("Q" is a fan of progrock and alternative rockmusic which can be heard throughout the album).
With "Chill Crystal Zone" the album already starts in a progressive way with fierce guitars and drums. But on many occasions the band takes a rest, like in the atmospheric "Midsummer’s Morning" in which we hear "Q"’s Memotronflutes and "Drowning Someone’s Sorrow Into The Ocean, part I" (a great title!). He also plays a fine steelguitar: that can be heard in "Seduction Crossing" and even sings, like in "Midsummer’s Night". The texts are by William Shakespeare and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Picture Palace Music creates music that is a perfect mix between electronic music, rock and prog and therefore may attract a diversity of music lovers. And also live, like on the "E-Live festival" in 2010 they proved they are a rising force in EM.