Former Uriah Heep, Lone Star and Gary Moore vocalist John Sloman releases his new solo album, Two Rivers, on March 25. You can watch the video for lead track This River Is A Time Machine here.
The personal record documents the multi-instrumentalist's journey from his childhood home in Cardiff to treading the well-beaten path to London and his encounters in the music business fronting major headline bands. It's a distillation of Sloman’s eclectic musical progress from Lone Star to Uriah Heep, his adventures with UFO and The Gary Moore Band and his Todd Rundgren produced debut solo album Disappearances Can Be Deceptive. He also contributed keyboards to UFO's 1981 album, The Wild, The Willing And The Innocent.
The soundtrack to a life less ordinary begins with the title track’s prophetic opening lines: 'Two rivers flow through my mind - the one I see before me and the one I left behind.'
Says Sloman: “The River Taff and the River Thames have come to personify this unrelenting tug of love I have experienced for most of my adult life. I left the one with a spring in my youthful step. But with so many of those who once walked beside me now gone to that great river in the sky, I regret all the days I was away. This album is for them – and for those of you still being torn in two by your own two rivers.”
This memorial theme is taken further on the new single This River Is A Time Machine, which explores the memory bank simile of these constant yet fluid and life-giving channels delivered with a heartfelt passion by John. Revisiting his childhood on Scenes From An Old Biscuit Tin, he explains the song’s inspiration: “On school mornings, as I ate my porridge, I would lose myself in images of Elizabethan London adorning the family biscuit tin, while dreaming that I might one day go there – London, that is.”
Londinium and Charing Cross Moon document his substantial achievements as a major player in the late 70s and 1980s rock music scene and his continuing solo career. There is a pleasant surprise in store for fans of John Sloman with the avant-garde nature running right through this record. Think experimental Frank Zappa and late-period Scott Walker meeting the acoustic elements of Led Zeppelin and your imagination will be stoked by the captivating contents of this unique and exceptional album.
Two Rivers tracklisting
1. Two Rivers
2. This River Is A Time Machine
3. Caerdydd (City On The River)
4. Scenes From An Old Biscuit Tin
5. From The Taff To The Thames
6. Londinium
7. Blackweir
8. When I Go Home
9. Rest In Peace (For Sylvy)
10. Charing Cross Moon
11. 70s Sunday
12. Walking Along The Taff
13. The Last Coalminer
14. Farewell To London Town
(Source: www.loudersound.com)