News 01-04-11

Here we are in April and only the 1stnewsletter of 2011!  Been slacking a bit lately – sorry.

What news?  Well, for those of you that may not know already Abel Ganz has a few gigs lined up for 2011. 

We hope to arrange a few more but at the moment we are confirmed for the following:
 
Friday 20th May @ The Ferry Glasgow
We are especially looking forward to this one since it is our first gig in our own home town for some time.  It is a three band bill with the wonderful Credo who are promoting a brand new album and the re-born Scottish Neo-Prog legends Comedy of Errors who also have a new [1stin decades] CD.

Look out for erstwhile Ganz keyboards maestro Hew Montgomery making an appearance with the Errors on . . . . bass?!! 

We really hope some of you can make it along to this one and help promote Prog in Scotland.

Doors @ 8pm and for early dinner 6pm. Advance tickets £10 + b/fee. With early dinner £23.95 + b/fee. On the night price £12
More info here : http://www.the-ferry.co.uk/





 
Saturday 21st May @ The Electric Garden Festival
We are delighted to be appearing at this inaugural festival in the North West of England.  The festival will take place on Thursday 19th May, Friday 20th May and Saturday May 21st at The Beat Club, Blackpool. This purpose built music venue holds in excess of 300 people.

There is an absolute stellar line up for this festival – the day we are playing is headlined by The Tangent – and the whole thing is being filmed for a forthcoming Prog-Rock documentary.

More info here : http://www.electricgardenfestival.com/tickets/advance-tickets







Saturday 4th June @ Mattfest 3. The Peel – Kingston, London

Our first ever gig in London!  Can’t wait.  Full line up is: TOUCHSTONE, ALAN REED, ABEL GANZ, UNTO US, and FROM GREAT HEIGHT. 

Very much looking forward to hooking up with our old friend Alan Reed.  Should be great - not too sure about this poster though? 



More info here : http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=181317875221412&ref=ts 

& also here http://www.peelmuzik.com/

 

 

 

 

News 16-08-10

Well - what a great time we all had at this year's Baltic Prog Fest in Lithuania.  Now we have been back for a week or so Hugh has been reflecting on our first gig outside the UK.  Read on.... 

Baltic Prog Fest 2010
 
Saturday 31stJuly 2010. Mark that date in your diaries. We all remember where we were when Kennedy was shot, when Elvis or Lennon died, when Gabriel left Genesis … and now you can add the above date as the day Abel Ganz, 30 years into its existence, played their first gig outwith the shores of this Sceptred Isle. Despite a few close calls in the past we have never actually played outside the UK, so imagine our excitement and pleasure when we were invited to play at the Baltic Prog Festival on the outskirts of Vilnius in Lithuania.

We knew from our research that it was one of the smaller European festivals but it had still attracted some top names over the years – such as Arena, Shadowland, Clive Nolan and Nick Barrett, and John Young who played at the festival this year for a second time. He had given us a warm endorsement of the festival and the enthusiasm of the organisers Jonas and Justinas of The Skys, having just returned from helping them with the recording of their current album. This proved to be an accurate assessment as the whole festival was run in a laid-back fashion that was both charming and filled with enthusiasm.

Our 1 a.m. flight from Edinburgh got us into Vilnius at 5.50 local time. The flight was smooth and we had no troubles getting all our equipment on and off and through customs –  despite my fears! However our excitement at arriving in a country that none of us had visited before was tempered by being up all night and we were all delighted to get to our beds just as the sun was breaking over the horizon.

We all surfaced for a very late breakfast mid-afternoon and prepared for our pick-up for the festival. Justinas duly arrived on time to take the equipment and an advance party consisting of Jack, Maria (my good lady) and myself off to the site some 30 km outside the city. En route we had to make a few stops for currency, fags and serious mosquito repellent and to pick up a few other bands so we could all travel in convoy. This gave us an opportunity to see a good bit of Vilnius, which is a fairly sprawling city with a long, rich and varied history.

There is a beautiful historic old town with quaint narrow streets and dozens of churches, wide city boulevards with shops and malls that you would find in any modern European city. However there is also the very obvious legacy of Soviet rule with many drab 60’s tower blocks which to be honest were no worse than any schemes back home, we could have been in Easterhouse or Castlemilk  only without the litter, shell-suited neds and rabid pitbulls! And the sun was shining which made everything seem better!

On leaving the city we passed through woods and fields dotted by small houses and farms and eventually turned off the main road onto a small side road which in turn became a wide dirt track which again narrowed down to a single track as we crossed a field and entered a forest. By this time we were all wondering where we were heading until the single track emerged from the woods onto a huge gently sloped clearing ringed by tents and a river, a perfect setting for a festival. The whole feeling of the event was very tranquil and friendly in true festival spirit, campfires, barbeques, beer tent, dreadlocked guys juggling….you get the vibe!

Being on last we took full advantage of the beer tent and the excellent Lithuanian lager whilst we enjoyed the other bands, Distant Light a Latvian/Estonian band definitely on the thrash side of prog, Palindrome from Austria an eclectic mix of brass and angst, my favourites Porcelain, renamed Porcelain Moon that evening who had driven 18 hours from Finland, a nice mix of trippy grooves and Floydesque strung out solos.

As the sun finally dripped below the trees and the innumerable midges danced in the stage lights we took to the stage. Given our use of acoustic instruments and laptop the PA guys did a good job setting us up reasonably swiftly and by now the audience were ready for some slightly more traditional prog and took to us instantly as we launched into “Sheepish”. Mick was excelling as a front man and interacted superbly with the audience (although how much of that was fuelled by Lithuanian lager is open to debate!).

Ventura was followed by two new songs, Mick’s solo acoustic song “Leaving the Past Behind” and the first part of Davie’s  “Rewind” which had already appeared at our unplugged gigs with Pendragon but was the first time we’d played it as a full electric band song. We then followed on with “Rain Again” from “The Dangers of Strangers” album with the extended end section which certainly got the audience moving.

Also making an appearance for the first time was Jack Webb on keyboards. Jack had initially just agreed to help us out at the festival following Hew’s departure but to our delight has now joined Abel Ganz on a permanent basis. His keyboard playing on “Shooting Albatross” was one of the albums highlights and live he excelled himself. His solo piano spot during “Looking for a Platform” drew enthusiastic applause from the audience who ended up clapping along and upping the tempo of the usually free form piece. Stevie’s Rickenbacker growled into life, Denis kicked in on drums whilst Jack and Davie traded solos. The fireflies danced in the lights and all too soon the gig was over.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the set, we sold a few CD’s and signed autographs on freshly purchased CD’s.  Jonas and Justinas did a wonderful job organising such friendly, feel good festival and deserved better support and a larger audience, but as they admitted they were up against several other festivals that weekend, a great shame given the great location and the warmth of the people involved. We eventually made it back to the hotel around 3pm and slept soundly.

Sunday saw us all up looking remarkably bright given the non stop weekend so far and the amounts of lager consumed. Sightseeing in the old town section of Vilnius was the order of the day and we all went our separate ways discovering the many churches, street markets and cafes tucked away in the winding streets. Denis did the official bus tour and filled us in on the city’s long and varied history over our evening meal. Mick, Maria and I did the local food whilst Davie, Denis and Jack played the safe option of steaks. They really missed out on the fluorescent pink cold beetroot soup with accompanying boiled potatoes followed by dumplings stuffed with lamb and bacon and vodka flavoured ice cream to finish washed down with…..you’ve guessed it, more Lithuanian lager.

All too soon we were off to the airport and the gig I thought would never come was over in the blink of an eye. So much planning and worrying for an hour and a half on stage, but having broken our European duck after so long, I for one can’t wait for another opportunity to bring our music to a wider audience again.

I was left with the memories of a superb woodland location and our music reverberating round the dark forest, the warmth and friendliness of the people and a beautiful historic city.
 
Aciu Lietuva  

 

Happier News:

Delighted to announe that Abel Ganz will be playing at this summer's Baltic Prog Fest.

As many of you will know the band has been absolutely itching to play in Europe so we are all thrilled to have been asked. Until we find a permanent replacement for Hew, keyboard duties for this show will be handled by our good friend Jack Webb. Jack has very kindly helped us out in the past and appears on several of the tracks on Shooting Albatross. Check out his MySpace here: http://www.myspace.com/jackwebbsmusic

Look out for more info soon!

 

A message from Hew Montgomery:

As Denis has said, with the very greatest reluctance I have decided that after more than twenty years it is time for me to move on from Abel Ganz. This decision has taken many months of thought, and reflects that I want to take my musical ramblings in a slightly different direction to the one that Abel Ganz is heading in. The band has always been an exciting adventure for me, and at this time the lads are negotiating to take the show further afield, as well as creating a new album. Being honest, I no longer relish the prospect of taking myself out on the road (probably a sign of old age), and I feel that I have so much to pursue in the future, writing and recording my own material as well as collaborating on a couple of other projects. I have (and always will have) the greatest respect for all the Ganzers both as friends and as musicians from whom I have learned so much, and I part on the best of terms with them all. I have made it clear that I will continue to support and help the band in any way I can, and hope to figure in some way in future Ganz projects (even if it’s just wrapping and mailing merchandise!).

So – where do we go from here? Well, my main project is Grand Tour and our first album is nearly done and should be available towards the end of the year. I an also co-producing and advising Comedy of Errors, a fine old Scottish prog rock band from the past who have reformed and are also in the final stages of producing a new album (again, for the end of the year). Lastly, I am heavily involved with my old friend Alan Bell in his clinical hypnotherapy venture, researching and producing sounds and music for a range of therapeutic cds he is developing (check out www.alandbell.co.uk for more info). I’d be pleased to let everyone know more about these projects, and websites will appear later this year – meantime, e-mail me on hew.montgomery@grandtourmusic.com for further info (sorry – sneaked in a shameless promo…).

Finally, a big thanks to all those people from all over this planet who have supported Abel Ganz over the years and with whom I have spoken at gigs etc – the (mostly) kind words and support have meant a lot!

So I go – but - as Arnie says – I’ll be back….

Hew Montgomery

 

Hi everyone,

A short update to let you all know how sad and sorry we all are to see the departure from Abel Ganz of our good friend and keyboards player Hew Montgomery.  Hew [after much soul searching] has decided that his own musical path lies not within the Abel Ganz circle and that he wishes to pursue his musical ambitions on his own. 

We stress that we remain on the very best of terms with Hew.  We are all very sorry indeed that he has decided to leave the band but respect his decision and wish him all the very best with whatever he does next.  Indeed, the door will always remain open and it is not entirely impossible that Hew may remain involved with the Ganz camp in some capacity.

Some of you may already be aware that Hew has been working on side & solo projects for some time and much of this is reaching fruition.  Please look out for a further update from Hew on the website very soon where he will make some exciting announcements regarding these projects.

That’s it for now

 

 

 

Hi there everyone,

Just a small post to say thanks very much to everyone who came to see us supporting Pallas in The Ferry last Friday night. It was really great to talk to so many people, and we just had a blast! We are all particularly happy as we felt it was the best on-stage sound we have had in ages and as a result we feel we played to our best.

A huge thank you, also, must go to the guys from Pallas for inviting us to play with them once again and even more so for allowing us to borrow their backline equipment. Lovely blokes one and all and a really great band!

For those of you who may not alreay know - Abel Ganz appear on the free CD that accompanies this month's issue of Classic Rock Presents Prog. Go get it.

CRPP

 

Hi everyone,

Well here we are again, high time for another Abel Ganz update and once again we have some exciting news to report.  It seems to be an accepted fact that Prog has a small but very loyal following in the UK. Unfortunately, playing live can be a hazardous and costly experience for a band such as ourselves coming from over the Scottish border with only a handful of gigs available.  It’s therefore great to be able to play festival dates to a captive audience of genuine Prog fans.  The Summers End Festival last year was great for us and we were delighted to meet so many likeminded people and encouraged by the reception we got.
 
So – we are very happy to announce that we will again this year be playing at several festivals! On the 9th of May this year we return to the Classic Rock Society for our second appearance in recent years at the Rotherham Rocks festival.  The CRS has over the years been instrumental in keeping the Prog flag flying in the UK and we are very much looking forward to our trip down to Yorkshire again.
 
Whilst the UK Prog fraternity is relatively underground, the opportunities and fan base in Europe would appear to be altogether greater judging by the feedback from bands and fans alike, which is why we are absolutely knocked out to be playing, so far, a couple of festival dates out with the UK in mainland Europe.
 
Firstly, we are heading off to Spain for a bit of sun at the AudioDenia festival in Denia on the Costa Blanca. The festival is held over the weekend 5th-7th September. Not long after that we finally make it to Germany – somewhere we have wanted to play for a very, very long time - where we will be appearing at the pRockfest Festival during the 2nd and 3rd of October.Our thanks go to our friend Udo of the band Abarax who is the man behind the organization of both these festivals and who has put his faith in us.  Sales of Shooting Albatross have been great in Germany with distributer Just for Kicks re-ordering time and time again and we have some very supportive fans who we hope to meet in October. We are therefore delighted to be playing live over there for the first time and doubly delighted once again, to be sharing the stage with our fellow Scots Ray Wilson and Stiltskin as we did at Rotherham Rocks a couple of years ago. Should be a good tartan day in Bielefeld!

The festival in Denia looks a real winner with Pendragon, Wishbone Ash, Galahad, Also Eden and Abarax to name but a few all on the bill over the weekend.  From a personal point of view my brother and his wife live just up the road in Moriera so it will be a great chance to catch up!
 
We are still hopeful to get a couple more European dates this year, the net has been cast and fingers crossed other festivals come to fruition!
 
As to other UK dates this year, well there are a few options in the pipeline and as much as we want to play as I said earlier coming south for one-off gigs is something we have to consider very carefully from a financial point of view.  Hopefully something will sort itself out with festivals or gig shares. I spoke at length to John Young on this very subject at a recent Glasgow gig of his and he is going for gig invites where fans group together and provide financial support and guarantees to enable him to play their town. An interesting concept and a novel way to drum up support!
 
The latest edition of French Canadian magazine Terra Incognita provided Denis, Hew and I each the chance to pick a list of our top ten Prog albums of all time.  They were also kind enough to write a great review of Shooting Albatross.. If all that wwasn't enough they even ran an interview with the band.  You can read it, in French, here: part i, part ii.  It was certainly fun picking our favourite albums and I don’t think we over lapped at any point which just goes to show what a wide and varied genre Prog is!   Thank you Michel!! USA publication progression magazine ran a favouable review of Shooting Albatross in it's last issue.  You can read it, in English, here
 
Since I started writing we have a couple of Stop Press/hold the front page moments to add! Firstly I am delighted to announce we have, after a bit of toing and froing, secured a support slot with Pendragon at their first Scottish gig in 20 years. The gig is at The Ferry in Glasgow on Sunday 10th May. This is the day after both bands play the CRS Rotherham Rocks festival.  However due to other commitments not all of us are available, so in the interests of still being involved in our home town and with a minimum of disruption to Pendragon's stage set up we are going, for the first time, to do an Abel Ganz "unplugged" acoustic set.  This will involve Davie, Mick and my good self at the front of the stage on bar stools with acoustic guitars playing slightly re-arranged versions of our songs.   To add to the arrangements and add a little colour to the three acoustics we are pleased that Stevie Lawrence and Fiona Cuthill will join us on stage to add percussion, bouzouki, fiddle and whistles to the sound.  Stevie and Fiona [as you will recall[ added a lot of the "folksy" sounds to "Shooting Albatross" and are both highly accomplished and respected session players on the folk scene.  Stevie as well as playing just about any known instrument is in demand for his album production.  They're both playing the previous night at a festival in Wiltshire with their band Rallion so it’s a case of all roads lead to Glasgow on Sunday! We are looking forward to this new twist to our sound and are grateful to Nick Barrett for giving us the opportunity to be a part of their venture over the border!
 
Lastly, as I was putting the finishing touches to this newsletter the sad news came that Martin Hudson is stepping down from the Classic Rock society.  Anyone who has been involved in Prog in the UK over the last two decades cannot have failed to come into contact with the CRS and Martin in particular.  Whilst the CRS is a team effort it has been under Martin's "from the front" leadership that Prog has been given a voice and outlet in the UK and without his drive, energy and sometimes blunt Yorkshire forthright speaking the whole Prog scene in this country would be a great deal worse off.
 
On a personal note Martin has always been very supportive of Abel Ganz over the years and has always given us gigs and space in the magazine even after the longest of our trademark hibernations!  You will definitely be missed Martin!  Best Wishes for the future.
 
How the CRS moves on without Martin will be interesting to see, however they can count on our support.  Prog needs everyone to get behind the CRS and we look forward to Kris, Dave and the team carrying on the torch.
 
Cheers for now,
 
Hugh.

Hi Everyone,

This is a very brief e-mail just to remind you all that we will be playing next weekend in England as guests of The Classic Rock Society.

We will be playing on the 7th Feb 2009 at Montgomery Hall, Church Street, Wathe-upon-Dearne. Near Rotherham.

We very much hope some of you can make it along and do please come and say hello if you do!

The reviews for Shooting Albatross continue to come in and [so far, so good!] they also continue to be very positive.  Two recent ones of note would be the recent reviews in French Harmonie Magazine  and Belgian Prog-résiste.

Harmonie Magazine is a great publication and we would thoroughly recommend that any French speakers amongst you subscribe to it at once! Here is a link to a .pdf copy of the review [in French: obviously].  
 Harmonie

The latest copy of Prog-résiste not only contains an excellent review of Shooting Albatross but also an interview with the band. Again, this is an absolutely excellent publication and we urge you to support the team there if you possibly can. There is a link to the review only here - again in French.  Hey - you know how to use Google translate right?

 dec_08
We also have had another rather good [English] review over at the Prog Archives.  This is a great site and anyone at all is welcome to write their own reviews and leave them there. This is something we would love more people to do as it helps raise awareness.

Not to be outdone, we have also begun to see some great reviews for The Dangers of Strangers re-issue start to appear. 

Here are three rather positive ones:

MLWZ :This is a great Polish site that has also been featuring Ganz music recently.  Thanks Artur!

RockArea.EU  : Another great site and a fantastic review - in english this time.

musicinbelgium.net : yet another great site.  This time from Belgium - review is in French. 
 
Well...  with all that news out of the way I now hand you over to our very own Mr. Hugh Carter who would like to address you.

Hello Friends,

My CRS magazine dropped through my letter box this weekend and in this issue we have the voting form for the BOTY awards. Now in previous years the mighty Ganzers haven’t got even within sniffing distance of an award, although I think I was nominated for best bassist one year, however I think this was more a case of Martin feeling sorry for me rather than for my nimble-fingered technique!

However, this year with the release of Shooting Albatross and the re-release of the 20th anniversary Dangers of Strangers and added to that some live performances, notably at Summers End we feel that we might be in with a shout of something! If nothing else we should get an award for longest gaps between albums!

We have received so many great reviews of Shooting Albatross and messages of support from fans over the year it would be great to have something to put on the mantelpiece to show for our efforts.
So, dear friends this is my blatant plug: if you're a CRS member VOTE FOR US!!

The voting forms are at the back of the current magazine or you can do it online at the CRS website (not MySpace). It’s the usual stuff Best Band | album |song | individual musicians etc so I'll leave it up to you!

Plug over, can I wish all our friends a very Happy Christmas and a Guid New Year!

All the best,

Hugh   :)

 

News 3.11.2008

Hi everyone - just a very quick one to say we have finally got around to uploading not one but two free downloads for the Dangers od Strangers 20th anniversary re-issue. Head over to the Dangers page to get them.

More soon!

3.10.2008

First of all we would like to say a huge thank you to all who came to see us at last weekend's Summer's End Festival. Wow! What an absolutely fantastic time we had.  Huw and Stephen really know how to put on a cracking event.  There was not a single band who we did not thoroughly enjoy but particular highlights for us were Magenta [incredibly, this was the first time we had seen Magenta - odd really given that Chris Fry plays a couple of solos on Shooting Albatross.  What a guitar player.  What a band.], Glow, [very Steve Hillage / System 7], Thieves Kitchen [they had a real Mellotron!!], and, of course, The Tangent who were quite simply superb.  I had my own reservations about the decision to get rid of the old line up but I need not have worried.  The Beardfish guys were just wonderful - especially the dancing bass player!  Thank you once again to all who came along and said hello - it was really fantastic to finally meet some of you at last.

Now - some exciting news.   We are pleased to announce that the re-issue of The Dangers of Strangers CD, which we have been working away at furiously over the last few months, is at last finally ready.  We literally took delivery of them the day before heading to Summer’s End.  As many of you will know, this year is the twentieth anniversary of the original release of this CD.  Considered by many to be the band’s best CD of the eighties we really wanted to mark that occasion: especially since this is the year that we ‘came back’. 

This twentieth anniversary edition of The Dangers of Strangers is really quite something!    Amazingly [and very lucky for us], Hugh still had the original master tapes tucked away at the back of his cupboards.  This meant we were able to do a digital transfer and re-master to an incredibly high fidelity - we believe the improvement in sound quality is quite remarkable. The CD is an ‘enhanced cd’ and includes bonus video footage from the recording sessions twenty years ago.  Transferred from an old VHS video tape, the video is a little shaky here and there but a fascinating document nonetheless.  The CD has been re-packaged inside a truly sumptuous fold-out digipak housed within a protective slip case.  With all new artwork throughout, the digipak includes a comprehensive, twenty page booklet featuring archive photographs, liner notes, and recollections from Hugh Carter, Hew Montgomery, Alan Reed, and Denis Smith.  If all that was not enough, there is also an additional bonus track! An alternative version of the Dangers of Strangers originally only available on the vinyl release ‘Double Exposure’ – a compilation of unsigned Prog band’s put together by Steve Wilson. 

As already mentioned, an enormous amount of time and effort went into this CD.   We really have tried to make it that little bit special. To this end we have decided that this release will be a strictly limited special edition. There will only ever be one thousand copies of this CD in this packaging in existence. If [and it’s a big if], we do ever decide to re-press then it will be in bog standard jewel case CD packaging. 

Of course, such a deluxe package as this was not cheap to produce. In fact, these CDs cost us over double the price per CD as the Shooting Albatross CDs did. This means that we simply cannot afford to sell them at the same price. We have decided therefore to sell these copies at £12.99 each. As before, if bought from our website, the price includes free postage to anywhere in the world. The CD is available now from our shop page.

What other news? Well, as mentioned in our last Newsletter, we are turning our thoughts to 2009 and plans are underway to take Abel Ganz to Europe for the first time ever. We are looking at possible gigs in The Netherlands and also Germany. As always, we would be very interested to hear from anyone who may have suggestions for possible venues.

That’s it for now.   All the very best. 

Denis

01.09.08

Phew!  Just back from the Montgomery Hall, Wath on Dearne. A bit of a long round trip for us but well worth it!  We thoroughly enjoyed it and can’t thank all those that came along enough for making us feel so welcome.  It’s always great to meet some new people and hopefully make a few new friends. 

Particular thanks to Chris & all from the Classic Rock Society for putting on another fabulous event.  Really – where would we all be without the CRS?  These guys really mean it and deserve all the support we can all give them.  Thanks again guys!

Gigs

On Thursday 11th September we're back on home turf at Stereo, the venue we used for the "Shooting Albatross" album launch. As on that night, support will be from Stevie Lawrence and Fiona Cuthill of folk band Rallion who will have just returned from festival gigs in Canada. Please try and make it along! Tickets are an unbelievably cheap £3.00 at the door. After Stevie & Fiona have done their stuff we should be on between 8.30 and nine.


image

As many of you know, we are playing at this year's Summers End festival in Sept.  We are really looking forward to meeting some of you there as we know many of you are going too.  Please do come and say hello! 

Our friends at Epilepticgibbon have produced a special podcast celebrating the festival and have an interview with one of the organisers stephen Lambe. A top bloke! Go check it out.

Reviews
The reviews for Shooting Albatross have started to come in. We are very happy to report that almost all of them have been very positive indeed. Here are the links to just some of them:
The Dutch Progressive Rock Page gave Shooting Albatross 8/10 and said it was "an album that overflows with strong melodies and hooks that should keep even the most cynical prog skeptic satisfied".  Full review here: 

Progwallhalla referred to Shooting Albatross as "captivating progrock", going on to say "it was almost a musical revelation"  Read the whole review here:

The Polish site http://www.rockarea.eu gave Shooting Albatross an incredible 9/10.   Read the review here:

There are some German language reviews here:

  There are some French reviews here:

 There are some Polish reviews here:

Have you seen a review we have missed?  If you have then, please, send us a mail with a link to it to let us know. 

Interview
Hew, Hugh, and Denis recently gave an interview with Piotrek Michalski of Polish site rockarea.eu You can read the whole interview here.

Thanks to all who took part in the T shirt competition: The lucky winners on this occasion were: Manfred from Germany, Daniele from Italy, & Andy from England. Congratulations to you all and look out for another competition coming soon.

 

24.08.08

Phew!  Just back from the Montgomery Hall, Wath on Dearne. A bit of a long round trip for us but well worth it!  We thoroughly enjoyed it and can’t thank all those that came along enough for making us feel so welcome.  It’s always great to meet some new people and hopefully make a few new friends. 

Particular thanks to Chris & all from the Classic Rock Society for putting on another fabulous event.  Really – where would we all be without the CRS?  These guys really mean it and deserve all the support we can all give them.  Thanks again guys!

As those of you who subscribe to our newsletter! will already know we have uploaded a new track for free download. Get it here

This is a relatively early mix of Sheepish and has a different guitar solo.  We reckon Davie had been listening to too much Pat Metheny that week before heading down to the studio.

Thanks to all who took part in the T shirt competition. We did this to test the water and see if there was an interest for Abel Ganz T shirts. Happy to report that it would appear that there is indeed an interest so we are now planning on expanding this part of the site.

The lucky winners on this occasion were: Manfred from Germany, Daniele from Italy, & Andy from England.  Congratulations to you all and look out for another competition coming soon.

We are turning our thoughts to doing one or two gigs in 2009 in the Netherlands and also possibly Germany. We would really like to hear from you if you have any suggestions for possible venues.

Sign up for our free newsletter!  

 

Due to very unfortunate circumstances and completely outwith our control we have had to cancel our gig tonight at Capitol in Glasgow. We're extremely sorry if you had made arrangements to come along and inconvenienced anyone at such short notice but it was really something we had no option but to do. We will keep you posted if we reschedule.


Best Wishes to all fans,
Hugh.

We have lots of news to tell you but before we get on to that we would just like to take a moment to say a very big thank you to everyone who agreed to sign up to our mailing list.  The launch of Shooting Albatross, after quite a long lay off period for the band, had made us wonder what kind of reception we might expect.  We are very happy to tell you that the  response has far exceeded even our wildest dreams!  Indeed things have been going so well with the sales of Shooting Albatross that we are almost sold out of all the copies we had pressed.  Besides that, we have been absolutely overwhelmed by the number of e-mails we have received from people wishing us good luck and offering their best wishes - people like YOU!  In fact, this is one of the main reasons we decided to start a mailing list and newsletter.  So, once again, please allow us to say a big thank you.

Reviews
The reviews for Shooting Albatross have started to come in. We are very happy to report that almost all of them have been very positive indeed. Here are the links to just some of them:

The Dutch Progressive Rock Page gave Shooting Albatross 8/10 and said it was "an album that overflows with strong melodies and hooks that should keep even the most cynical prog skeptic satisfied".  Full review here: 


Progwallhalla referred to Shooting Albatross as "captivating progrock", going on to say "it was almost a musical revelation"  Read the whole review here:


The Polish site http://www.rockarea.eu gave Shooting Albatross an incredible 9/10.   Read the review here:

There are some German language reviews here:

  There are some French reviews here:

 There are some Polish reviews here:

Have you seen a review we have missed?  If you have then, please, send us a mail with a link to it to let us know. 

Would you like to write your own review of Shooting Albatross and help spread the word about Abel Ganz at the same time?  You can write and leave a review here: 

Every review left here will help raise the profile of the band so please leave a review if you can.  Maybe you can help translate some of the non English reviews?  We would very much like to know what people are saying about Shooting Albatross but unfortunately we do not speak German, French, or Polish.  If you would like to help us by translating one of these reviews into English we would appreciate it very much.

Gigs
image

As many of you know, we are playing at this year's Summers End festival in Sept.  We are really looking forward to meeting some of you there as we know many of you are going too.  Please do come and say hello!  We have been trying to find a few gigs to do before this gig in order to make sure we are on top form.  To this end we can now announce the following additional gigs: 

Monday 4th August finds us back on stage at Capital in Glasgow, a neat venue in Sauchiehall Street. We will be supported by our good friends Stone Autumn, their blend of bouzouki, pipes, percussion and vocal harmoys have made them a popular band on the local acoustic scene.

Saturday 23rd August sees us making a trip down south to the Montgomery Hall, Wath on Dearne for the local beer festival. All entertainment for the weekend has been organised by the Classic Rock Society so it should be a progtastic weekend!

On Thursday 11th September we're back on home turf at Stereo, the venue we used for the "Shooting Albatross" album launch. As on that night  support will be from Stevie Lawrence and Fiona Cuthill of folk band Rallion who will have just returned from festival gigs in Canada.

Dangers of Strangers Remaster
Work is underway to release a special edition 20th anniversary re-master of The Dangers Of Strangers.  Originally released in 1988, this new special edition will feature a sparkling re-master (we very luckily discovered the original master tapes in Hugh’s archive), brand new artwork, new liner notes, a special bonus track never before available on CD, a photo gallery, and archive video from the recording sessions.  Wow – what a package! Look out for it!

Ganz in the charts!
Shooting Albatross has been doing rather well in the weekly Prog charts over at the USA’s Gagliarchives. After FOUR weeks we are still in the top ten! Amazing! Follow the album’s progress here: 

Pics
We recently added a whole lot more photographs taken and the Shooting Albatross launch gig.  You can view them at our Gallery page

Download 
Watch out for a new download coming in the 1st week of August on our Downloads page This will be a demo version of one of the Shooting Albatross tracks.

 

Shooting Albatross front cover13/06/08 Hi there everyone. We are working away furiously preparing the very first ever Abel Ganz Newsletter. If you would like to be added to the mailing list then please get in touch using the form on the Contact page.

07/05/08 Just wanted to let you all know that we have been absolutely knocked out by the level of response we have had to Shooting Albatross! Abolutely incredible. Thank you so much to everyone that has bought a CD from the site. We know that sales have been going very well too for the many other online Prog retailers that are selling our CD but of course the profits from every CD sold via our site go straight back into the Ganz war chest so we are especially pleased that it has been going so well. To this end - we have decided to keep our offer of free postage to anywhere in the world and the offer to sign your CD too [if you wish] open for another month at least. What else is there to tell you? Well, look out for a whole bunch more photos from the CD launch gig which will be on our gallery page very soon. As well as this, we hope to also have some additional items available from the Shop page very soon too.

Abel Ganz needs your help!!! Yes - although things have been going very well for us over the last month or so we would like to enlist your help. We have been slightly surprised that, as yet, we have not really seen many reviews for Shooting Albatross. We would like to ask you all that should you come across a review on the web or anywhere else you let us know - send us a link. Better still, why not write one yourself and leave it somewhere where it may be seen by likeminded Prog fans who might not be aware of us. In this way, you could be helping Abel Ganz enormously by helping to re-raise awareness of the band. Abel Ganz has been off the scene on hiatus for quite some years and now it's time to let as many people as possible know that we are back!

If you felt you might like to write a review of Shooting Albatross (or any of the other Ganz back catalogue) one of the places you can post it is here:

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=18238

I'm sure there are many other places and, of course, the more the better! Remember - if you come across a review anywhere please let us know.

 

 

 

Hello and welcome back to the newly designed Abel Ganz website. Much has happened since the site went offline but at last we are back up again with a new look reflecting the artwork of "Shooting Albatross".

If you have been following us on MySpace then you will know the long awaited album is finally finished and hits the streets at the end of April on our very own Abel Records label. However – you don’t need to wait that long: it’s available right here, right now! Get yourself over to our Shop page to grab your copy. To celebrate this momentous occasion, for the entire month of April we are offering the CD with free postage to anywhere in the world! As well as this, we will also (if you so wish) all sign your copy before sending it to you– just let us know if you want us to do this by adding a note when paying. And, if all that was not enough we have also decided to give you a track from the CD absolutely free and available to download from this website only – see if you can find it!

Recording Shooting Albatross has been a long slog and must surely be in the running for the title of "longest album in the making" ranking alongside The Blue Nile for the slowest band in history! Must be something in the air in Glasgow! But now at last, from a collection of songs/ideas we'd had kicking around ages ago, we have moved forward to the finished album with a great six piece line up. Stuart "Mick" MacFarlane signed up on lead vocals and additional guitars to join Davie, Denis, Stevie, Hew and Hugh to complete the jigsaw in Mick singing at Stereothe autumn. By way of an introduction Mick re-recorded vocals on one track but we left Hugh's original vocals on the others and of course Alan Reed's superb vocals on Hew's epic track "So Far".

Thursday 27th March saw the official launch party at Stereo, Renfield Lane in our home town Glasgow, where we played the album in its entirety plus a couple of old favorites. It was the first time we played "So Far" live and we were joined on stage by Stevie Lawrence and Fiona Cuthill from the folk band Rallion who both played on the recorded track. Stevie and Fiona will also played a cracking short support slot.

summers end festival logo

So what’s next…well our other big news which we are all absolutely buzzing about is our invitation to play at The Summers End Festival in Lydney, Gloucestershire. The three day festival over the weekend 26th-28th September features the cream of Prog bands and we are honoured to be sharing the stage on Sunday 28th just below The Tangent and Frost#. We are hoping to be down for the full weekend to soak up the atmosphere. Should be fantastic so do everything within your power to get there!

In the meantime we hope to play some selected dates between now and then. Stevie D is working away furiously to get the redesigned website fully on line as soon as possible and we are hatching plans for a new limited edition 20th anniversary re-release of The Dangers of Strangers on our newly formed Abel Records.