Time Dwellers Stream Debut Album Novum Aurora in Full; Out Tomorrow on Argonauta Records
Swedish heavy progressive rockers Time Dwellers will release their debut album, Novum Aurora, tomorrow through Argonauta Records. The outfit — and really, aren’t we all dwellers in time? — is a relatively recent project from some clearly-aware-of-what-they-want-to-do players, including Martin Fairbanks, whose prior band The Graviators released their last album, Motherload (review here), in 2014, and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Kristofer Stjernquist, who had previously worked together with Fairbanks in the group Nymf.
Together with The Graviators‘ founding drummer Henrik Bergman (also percussion and backing vocals, as listed below), the three-piece bring forth Novum Aurora as a suitable discovery of new light in sound, pulling together classic prog lushness from the likes of Gentle Giant or Greg Lake-era King Crimson and melding it with a post-McCartney bounce on “At Least We’re Having Fun” or “Seasons Change,” among a slew of heavy rock songcraft impulses. Fairbanks, with a mellow, breathy vocal delivery, harnesses a psychedelic edge, but the intention is clear and conveyed purposefully in the nine-minute album opener and longest track (immediate points) “Rising Dawn/Awakening/Metamorphosis,” which serves effectively in summarizing much of the shimmering resonance to follow, the active synth line and drums of its first part and bright melody giving over to mellow, subtly fuzzy-funky stretch of verses — note the stop after the mention of death — before linear-building into a more densely weighted wash.
That’s not by any means everything Novum Aurora culls across its eight-song/48-minute expanse, but it’s certainly a start. “At Least We’re Having Fun” is a delight both for its Beatlesian casualness and its seeming acknowledgement of prog’s obscure place in
the pantheon of rock and roll, and the still-melodically-centered “Seasons Change” turns that bounce heavier with a Scorpions-style tonality and groove behind it, catchy but not dumbed down in order to be so, echoing the sentiment in the opener in the line “Sometimes I feel I want to die,” the uptempo nature of the song nonetheless full of life. “What’s About to Happen…” is a shorter sweep, starting quiet and growing full over just two and a half minutes, big-drum rumbling in its second half under wistful guitar, and it finds an answer in the subsequent “Sound of the Apocalypse,” where the low end and later sense of surging vocal layers pays off some of the darker moodiness that’s already unfurled, the flow central, patient, but moving.
Cohesive in execution, it borders on overwhelming, which is only right given the subject matter, and as with “Rising Dawn/Awakening/Metamorphosis” giving over to “At Least We’re Having Fun” and “Seasons Change” being complemented by the shorter “What’s About to Happen…,” so too does “Sound of the Apocalypse” move into “Surfing With Greta” (3:56), inevitably bringing to mind Steve Vai‘s Surfing With the Alien, but establishing its own presence through guitar-whalesong and a steady drum backing. The structure shifts with the arrival of closing pair “You Are the Sun” and the digital-bonus “Tabular Balls” (as opposed to “Tubular Bells?”), which both top seven minutes.
The former, in wrapping the vinyl, brings a suitable sense of landing in its pastoral psychedelia, Stjernquist‘s vocal reminiscent of Death Hawks but more likely drawn from the same foundation of classic heavy prog. The latter, meanwhile, feels kin to “Seasons Change” with its “The Zoo”-esque riff and general ’70s rock fluidity, but the presence of synth and keys in fleshing that out isn’t to be understated, particularly in the beginning and end. As with the start of Novum Aurora, the finish seems aware of its place in the sphere of the entirety and moves to land not only an impression of its own, but one that speaks to the broader reach of the work. It is very much the kind of listen where what you put into it is what you get out, and as their debut, Time Dwellers‘ Novum Aurora sets up a forward progression that one only hopes can and will continue along the path set out here.
Not a minor undertaking front-to-back, but worth digging into in repeat fashion.
As always, I hope you enjoy:
Time Dwellers, Novum Aurora (2022)
Progressive rock trio TIME DWELLERS, the brainchild of former Graviators guitarist Martin Fairbanks and multi-instrumentalist and singer Kristofer Stjernquist, is gearing up for the release of their upcoming debut album, Novum Aurora, due out on May 27, 2022 via Argonauta Records.
Formed in 2017, the TIME DWELLERS blend anything from rock to prog, funk, and jazz to compose a potpourri of songs that are still coherent and cohesive. Novum Aurora showcases a musical landscape filled with mellotron, 12-string guitar, synthesizers, grooving rhythms, thrilling guitar solos and imaginative existential lyrics delivered from a whisper to a lion’s roar. In a world that’s growing more cynical by the minute, where popular music, at the same rate, is getting saturated and bland, the TIME DWELLERS set out to put a blanket around you and soothe your aching soul, while not fearing any musical limits and borders.
“Novum Aurora is an album with a lyrical theme about the apocalypse, the direction we are headed, but also of hope and beauty, that there will be a new dawn, perhaps a spiritual awakening,“ the band explains. “We are all Time Dwellers in the sense that we live here and now in the present. There is no future, there is no past, there is only now. Transform and transcend along with your fellow Time Dwellers! You are the sun, it’s time to rise and shine.”
Album Release: May 27, 2022 – Argonauta Records
Tracklist:
1. Rising: Dawn / Awakening / Metamorphosis
2. At Least we´re Having Fun
3. Seasons Change
4. What’s About to Happen…
5. Sound of the Apocalypse
6. Surfing with Greta
7. You are the Sun
8. Tabular Balls (CD Bonus Track)
TIME DWELLERS are:
Kristofer Stjernquist: Lead vocals, mellotron, synthesizers, pedal bass, electric bass, 12-string guitar, rhythm guitar
Martin Fairbanks: Lead guitar, rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Henrik Bergman: Drums, percussion, backing vocals
