Flamborough Head
Flamborough Head has existed since the beginning of the nineties. Keyboard player Edo Spanninga felt it was time to start a band which would make progressive rockmusic, a musical flow which was nearest to Edo’s heart but in which he had never been active before. Frans Wolf (keyboards & drumcomputing) and Wiebe Wolf (guitars), both former members of Saga oriented progband Made in Holland, were interested in writing and recording. Along with Siebe Rein Schaaf (vocals) they went on as a quartet. After some time they felt that working with sequencers and drumcomputers limited their possibilities and so they asked Koen Roozen (drums) and Marcel Derix (bass) to complete the band. Quite soon it appeared, that for all sorts of reasons, this line up was not effective and Frans and Wiebe decided to leave the band, which at that time did not have a name yet. Koen and Marcel shared a long musical past and from the period that they both played in Stiffener they knew André Cents who was willing to become Wiebe’s successor. At the same time Siebe Rein took over some keyboard playing from Frans as well.
In this line up they worked on new material and they decided to record this material in their rehearsal room in Bakkeveen, on their own recording equipment for a cassette-demo.This demo was released in 1994 under the name of Flamborough Head. Background Magazine wrote: “The balance between keyboards and energetic guitar licks is excellent. The songs are about six to seven minutes long, with the right changes in mood and spheres. This is the kind of true progressive rock I think BM readers would like to hear”. After listening to this demo, Malcolm Parker of the English proglabel Cyclops decided to offer Flamborough Head a record contract.
As a result of this development, the band recorded their debut-album “Unspoken Whisper”, which was released in 1997.
Followed by some excellent reviews, the band gained a steadygrowing following, showing up at concerts.
The Classic Rock Society (Rotherham, UK) became also aware of Flamborough Head and awarded the band as “Most Promising Prog-act of 1998”.
Fueled with lots of motivation Flamborough Head then went on to write and produce the next album “Defining the Legacy”.
Mainly written around an autobiographical story from Siebe Rein Schaaf, it took some time to evolve the music. It was in 2000 that this cd was released. As a result of the band’s evolution it then appeared that Andre Cents would no longer be part of the band.
His replacement was guitarplayer Eddie Mulder who, within a few weeks, performed with the band at Progfarm 2000.
Then Siebe Rein Schaaf also decided to move on. His replacement became Margriet Boomsma, Edo’s wife, a singer, playing flute and handling the lyrics. These changes had, ofcourse, considerable influence on the overall sound and writingstyles which then shifted from the previous neo-progstyle to the more 70’s oriented symfo-style which has become the band’s trademark these days.
In the meantime Cyclops Records had decided to release Flamborough Head’s original demo’s because there’d been considerable demand on it.
Entitled “Bridge to the Promised Land” and released in 2001 it closed the “mark-1”-era of the band.
The new line up of Flamborough Head released the album “One for the Crow” in 2002 which got excellent reviews from all over the world. The group also performed throughout Europe, mainly at festivals, in front of enthusiastic audiences.
Ocasionally “going through the motions” and thus growing and developing, the band managed to produce the next album in 2005, called “Tales of Imperfection”, their best so far, which even brought them to Mexico, to perform at the prestigious BajaProg-festival, again with excellent responding. Once more another album is in the make, as the band is currently composing and rehearsing.
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