quilted QUOTATIONS Gunnar Creutz of Floby: "It's impossible to comprehend what the Moor is all about by reading a few reviews. I've followed the band from the start and I still can't say that the picture I've made is coherent in any way". PROGRESSION NO 22 WINTER 1996-97 ON FLUX - JOHN COLLINGE "Uh ... semi-symphonic psych-grunge jazz-rock ? Well, that's as good a place as any to begin defi-ning this fascinating project from Sweden's The Moor, featuring contributions from ex-Hawkwind member Nik Turner. The lyrical tone of Flux is dark and nasty, led by Kenneth Magnusson's slight-ly Bowie-esque odes to spiritual and social decay. The arrangments are incredible - superbly flow-ing studies in contrast from stomping, gothic dance rhythms ("Body","Stay") to free-form saxo-phone-trumpet interplay ("Bell"). There are ambient/trance passages, a dab of space-rock, and am-ple orchestral embellishments provided by a "Moorchestra"of trumpet and flugel horn, trombone, violin and tambourine. Turner's influence seems central here through his well-documented flair for compositional nuance and classy flute and sax voices. An eminently intriguing progressive album." METAL SHUFFLE NORGE - GEIR LARSEN "Jeg må si svenske The Moor har brukt tiden siden forrige album på en særdeles rasjonell måte, for "Flux" er som å stå overfor et helt nytt band. Borte er de famlende, halvdårlige låtene, og inn på arenaen stormer en forrykende hybrid av urprogressiv tenkning, popmelodier og ytterst smak-fulle nyanser i klang og artikulasjon. Det hele veves gjerne inn i flytende mønsterformasjoner, og flere spor toppes av ekstatiske blåserekker. Her finnes alt ifra elegiske saksofoner og harmoniske vokalspor, til lydorgier og psykotisk-psykedelisk ornamentering."Flux" byr på de mest vanvittige glissandoer, såvel som vakre og groove-orienterte partier. Leter man efter to impulser, strander man på de tilsynelatende motpolene King Crimson og The Mission eller Sisters Of Mercy. Jazz, eksperimentell-prog, pop og metal avløser hverandre med stilsikkert grep, og hvor "Baby" er en sing-along-affære, når fantastiske "Talk" de store symfoniske høyder. Åpningskuttet "Suck" hører også med blant de mer fenomenale øyeblikk på et album som viser et band i svær utvikling. Ja, jeg vil - tross alt noen rynk på nesa under "Soon" - gå så langt som å anbefale platta. Køp direkt fra Bishop Garden Records,(...) " EXPOSÉ NO 11 FALL/WINTER 1996/97 - PETER THELEN "The Moor's first album (reviewed in issue #9) set the stage with a dark and ominous gothic style that weighed in somewhere between Hawkwind and Anekdoten, with vocalist Hans Moll's low-register crooning adding to the sinister and foreboding nature of their sound. This time around space captain Nik Turner has joined the band as their sixth member, on sax and flute, and their style has gotten even darker and more aggressive, moving into near-industrial realms at times. Keyboards remain a potent and prominent part of their sound, although they seem to have finally planted their both feet in the nineties, there's not much 'tron on the new album, but what is there is powerful and magnificent. The lyrics seem particulary disturbed, very dark and disconnected, and a perfect match for where they are travelling musically. Across the album's seven tracks (each tit-led with a single four letter word...), this is the kind of dark, detached sound that Landberk hints at, mixed with ample amounts of techno-aggresion, swirling effects, frightening images, and mo-dern production techniques. Guests add trumpets, violin, flugelhorn (courtesy of Jerker Rellmark of Masque) and trombone. So in short, if one liked what The Moor was doing last time out, "Flux" takes it all a couple of steps further. " KERRANG JANUARY 18 1997 ON FLUX - LIAM SHEILS "Bizarre, horn-laden avant-garde prog from Sweden that features the talents of Nik Turner - one time blower of all things brass for Hawkwind. Some of it sounds like dEUS without the pop songs; some of it sounds like Rush fronted by Nick Cave; the rest sounds like a fully-stocked mu-sical instrument shop being demolished. Is it any good? Depends on what you've been taken, really. " NIK TURNER IMMEDIATE CONCLUSION "I want to join the band" ANGRY ENGLISH FANZINE ' "Suck" starts things off with symphonic keyboards then heads deep into ANEKDOTEN territory with a new (human) drummer, mellotrons all over the place, that wonderful bass sound and the NIK TURNER covering the cello area with saxes and flutes alongside a trumpet and flugelhorn player. "Baby" is a short, lightweight acoustic indie guitar song while "Body" is more experimen-tal in the keyboard backing with its tiny nod to dance music in its slavery to the beat but, unlike their debut CD "Every Pixie Sells A Story", these songs are fully integrated into the Swedish pro-gressive rock mainstream. Worth buying for the supreme "Suck", "Soon" and "Talk" alone. The band still display their prediliction for risk-taking and experimentation but now THE MOOR have the prog credentials to match, what with Jerker Rellmark of MASQUE, Fredric Sundqvist playing violin (from fellow Swedes DARXTAR), Stefan Rensrtom of SIMON SAYS and the inimitable NIK TURNER all guesting on the album.' KERRANG # 1 ON ONE OF THE VINYL SINGLES "It all collapses into a heap of Swedish yak droppings. Are there yaks in Sweden?" KERRANG # 2 ON "PIXIE" "...misogynistic..." ROCK BOX ONCE A SWEDISH P3 RADIO SHOW "Jesus Christ, my God...it's Hans Möll and it's the Moor from Falköping" ANUBA ONCE A SWEDISH P3 RADIO SHOW "Turn it off, turn it off!!!" BACKSTAGE REVIEW OF "PIXIE" "This is a demanding album !" GP REVIEWING DREAM THEATRE AND THE MOOR "If Dream Theater have a lot of brain and muscles, Swedish The Moor from Falköping have put more heart in their much more introspective music. After the boastful music of Dream Theater it's good to rest in the meditative synth and mellotron earscape of Kenneth Magnusson." AFTONBLADET PULS ANNIKA SUNDBAUM-MELIN - ON PIXIE "What's this? A Swedish up-and-coming band who sound something like "Army of lovers goes deathmetal". Quite cool, actually. Some kind of industrial metal with extremely dark and brutal vocals. Progressive, cool and very exciting. Raw!" WONDROUS STORIES - #47 NOVEMBER 1995 ON PIXIE "On the whole it's not a bad album; some of the guitar work is excellent but there's too much synth for my liking and the vocals are extremely monotonous!" EXPOSÉ #9 WINTER 1996 "Well, you gotta wonder about a band that (literally) pays homage to themselves in the liner notes. Hmmm... Okay, take a deep breath and then belt out the lowest note you possibly can. That repre-sents the highest note vocalist Hans Møll hits on the entire album. Well, almost anyway. His vocals are typically an octave lower than one would expect during any given section, but match the omi-nous, dark, almost robotic sound of the music. The songs have a suspenseful, minor, unresolved quality about them that is very gothic and symphonic. I think that there's maybe three major chords on the entire album. Most of the arrangements are sparse and spacey, with occasional key-board or guitar soloing on top. The style is frequently reminiscent of Ozric Tentacles or Hawk-wind. Keyboardist Kenneth Magnusson creates a lot of the mood with his captivating Mellotron, sampler, and synthesizer playing. Tron fans will love this release. It's everywhere on this album. In addition to the album title, some of the lyrics show that the band has a sense of humor. "Neo-Futurist Fantasy" is one of the funniest tracks I've heard in a long time. However, a lot of the lyrics are about death. I wonder what that combination of humor and death means? Listening to this album puts you into a trance. The Moor are certainly masters of dark mood music." CROHINGA WELL ON PIXIE "Together with Germany and Italy, Sweden is on the way to becoming one of the more important suppliers of new psychedelic music, and I have another new name and another excellent debut album to present to you...Conclusion: The Moor is a fantastic new Swedish psychedelic space rock band, a bit similar - in some places - to their fellow countrymen Darxtar, but a lot more versatile in instrumentation and songwriting. "Every Pixie Sells a Story" is a very promising debut album that will please any Hawkwind fan or just anybody interested in European psychmusic."