Lee Abraham Soars Above the Prog Storm
Galahad's guitarist reaches dizzying new heights with another smashing new progressive rock solo album, "Origin of the Storm."
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. After a week off to deal with Hurricane Milton (luckily without any damage or other issues), MRC is back. So is UK-based guitarist Lee Abraham.
I last spoke with Lee a few years ago about his Harmony/Synchronicity album in early 2021. That album had come out in the second half of 2020. I missed getting to discuss with him his 2021 release, Only Human. Lee has been an online friend since I first crossed paths with him on the official Spock’s Beard message board more than a decade ago, and we’ve even connected in person once at the Rites of Spring Festival. I’ve always enjoyed Lee’s music — both his solo work and his playing in Galahad. So, after missing out on a discussion about Only Human, I promised myself I’d keep tabs on him and make sure to talk to him about his next album.
That album has arrived. Origin of the Storm is set for an Oct. 21 release (that’s today!) on F2 Music. I reached out to Lee a couple of weeks ago and he graciously spent some time with me discussing the new album.
Let’s get to that story.
English guitarist and songwriter Lee Abraham is one of those guys — a musician working a day job and toiling away on his music in his spare time, doing what he loves and is driven to do, impressing those who know his work but not exactly breaking through the noise of today’s music scene to attain the level of recognition his work deserves. He’s hardly unique in that regard, but it is remarkable whenever a talented individual — even in a niche genre like progressive rock — can be so good at something without everyone knowing about it.
Abraham, who also plays guitar with UK progressive rockers Galahad, is set to release his 10th solo album today, and Origin of the Storm shows that he continues to develop as a composer and improve his ability to edit, produce, and mix his own work. He also continues to surround himself with outstanding musicians to help him realize his vision.
Origin of the Storm consists of seven new songs from Abraham that marry his obvious love of (and knack for) progressive rock with melodic rock and even some heavier music at times. While Abraham began his solo career singing his own songs, like many people, he doesn’t care for the sound of his own voice, although it is an expressive one that (in my opinion, anyway) worked well on early albums like Pictures in the Hall and View from the Bridge. As he has done for the last several albums, Abraham has enlisted multiple talented vocalists for Origin of the Storm, including Peter Jones (Tiger Moth Tales, Camel), Mark Spencer (Galahad), and Marc Atkinson (Riversea, Moon Halo, Nine Stones Close), playing to the strengths of each.
In addition to writing the music and lyrics and producing, engineering, and mixing the album, Abraham handles electric and acoustic guitars, piano, Taurus bass, and some of the keyboards. Gerald Mulligan returns on drums. Ken Bryant plays bass on all but one song (“Isolation/Disconnection”), on which Alistair Martin plays. Rob Arnold contributes piano and additional keyboards on several tracks, with Paul Drew providing the first guitar solo on “Chalk Hill.” Abraham tapped the talented Karl Groom to master the album.
The songs were written over the past three years and recorded at Abraham’s own home studio in Hampshire, with the drum recording taking place at Dockside Studio — also in Hampshire.
“This album, Origin of the Storm, came together really quickly,” Abraham said. “Because I remember Galahad played at the Prog for Peart Festival, which is held in July here in England, and Galahad headlined that. And I saw the CEO of F2 Music. He was there, and we had a chat, and he said, ‘How’s the album going?’ At that point I was still waiting for various performances to be finished. Stuff wasn’t completely mixed yet. I was still unhappy with some of the guitars. So I said, ‘Oh crikey, well, I might get it out this year if I’m lucky.’”
When Abraham returned from the festival, things quickly came together, with various musicians submitting vocal tracks and Abraham getting the final parts mixed, working with the label to coordinate dates, and finalizing the artwork.
The album kicks off with the short instrumental title track, featuring a guest keyboard solo from Clive Nolan (Arena, Pendragon).
“The way things work in this crazy world of prog is you tend to do favors for people, and I did a favor for Clive about a year ago,” Abraham said. “It was kind of a spoken word part and there was also some singing in there, and it was part of an ensemble. I was talking to him recently, and I said, ‘Oh Clive, I wonder if you could repay the favor I did for you last year. Would you mind putting some keyboards on this track for me?’ And he was only too happy to oblige, so that’s how that came about. So, he did a couple of solos on the title track for me.”
The title of the song and the album were late arrivals in the making of the record.
“The actual title Origin of the Storm came right at the end,” Abraham said. “As a musician, I always find lyrics come last, so song titles tend to come last. The music definitely comes first. So, I can record entire songs that are instrumental. I always leave gaps for words.”
Abraham said when considering the title he thought of the themes of the album’s tracks and how there was quite a bit of darkness within the song lyrics — the war in Ukraine, mental health, loneliness, etc.
“It all sounds like a storm coming,” he said.
Ultimately, he landed on Origin of the Storm.
The song “Origin of the Storm” serves to set the tone for the album to come before segueing into “The Same Life,” which features an early, crunchy guitar riff. The song shifts down into an atmospheric mood, featuring Jones’ brilliant vocal work. Abraham said the title track and “The Same Life” were originally two parts of the same song, which explains why there’s an easy transition between the two tracks.
Lyrically, the song is about the Russian war against Ukraine. Abraham said the inspiration for the song came from imagining that the people in the attacking country and the people in the nation being attacked can’t be vastly different kinds of human beings. That’s reflected in his lyrics.
We all share the same life
We all share the same fears
How can we put it right?
Just end all the tears
“As the country that’s been invaded, as Ukraine has been, it must feel like you’ve been invaded by absolute demons. Absolute monsters,” Abraham said. “But I guess when we kind of analyze it, the people who are there in Russia…they’re just the same as us, really. They still get up in the morning every day. They dress their kids and send their kids off to school. And then they go to work, and they come home from work, and they cook dinner. We’re kind of leading the same life. I’m not making a statement. I’m trying to make sense of it in my own mind by saying, ‘They must be the same as us. Surely these people are good people, and it’s just a small fraction of people who happen to be in charge who are the monsters — not the people who are having the same life as us.’”
The song goes through multiple tempo changes that keep things interesting without being obtrusive. A newscast in the background of a delicate instrumental section around the six-minute mark provides additional atmosphere before a gorgeous guitar solo steals the show. It’s one of my favorite moments on the record. The song speeds back up and repeats the chorus before returning to the crunchy guitar riff from the beginning.
If “The Same Life” isn’t my favorite song on the album (and it might be), “Chalk Hill” could fit the bill. Another song with Jones on vocals, it starts with a drum pattern from Mulligan and a simple piano motif from Arnold. Abraham brings in a lovely acoustic guitar figure prior to the first verse. This song is eight minutes long, but it’s one of the more accessible songs progressive rock can offer — something at which Abraham excels.
The guitar work, Jones’ lead vocals, and the backing harmony vocals on the chorus are highlights of this song for me, but it also has wonderfully reflective lyrics that are a bit autobiographical.
“We used to go and play down by the railway tracks. It was a disused railway track near where I lived,” Abraham said. “Leading up to these railway lines were banks of chalk. But there was one in particular we used to ride our bikes up and down. We used to call it Chalk Hill.”
The inspiration for the lyrics started with Abraham making an airport run and driving past a road sign that said “Chalk Hill,” reminding him of his childhood haunt.
Despite Abraham being a guitarist by trade, he gives the first solo spotlight in this track to Paul Drew.
“I follow a lot of channels on YouTube. It seems to be the modern way these days,” Abraham said. “And I found this YouTube channel called The Studio Rats, and it’s primarily a channel devoted to guitar gear. (Drew is a) Great guitar player who was always demoing all the gear. And he actually moved to my area. When I first discovered the channel, he lived near London. He contacted me and said, ‘I’m going to be moving down your way, not far from you.’”
Abraham and Drew made plans to meet up in person after the move, and the two ended up making some videos about gear together and became good friends.
“When it came to recording the album, it just felt really natural for me (to include Drew) because I really admire his playing,” Abraham said. “He’s done a lot of recording in the past but nothing in recent years, so he was really up for it. It’s nice to get a variation sometimes. His solo does stand out, but it stands out in a good way. He definitely played for the song.”
“Isolation/Disconnection” is a completely different animal from the song it follows. It begins with a bit of an industrial atmospheric flavor and then breaks into an aggressive, crunchy, guitar-based opening section, with some vaguely Deep Purple-esque keyboards before dropping in tempo to allow space for Spencer’s vocal in the verse. The chorus returns the song to its previous uptempo pace and the song bounces back and forth between the two speeds across its nearly nine minutes of run time. There’s a lovely acoustic guitar section in the middle, just past the halfway mark. Abraham’s electric guitar solo near the end of the song, harmonized strategically at times, is another of the album’s goosebump-raising moments.
Abraham tapped Spencer for the vocal for this one because of the style of the song and the vocal delivery he wanted for it, calling his Galahad bandmate’s style “operatic.”
“It’s not your standard kind of rock delivery. He’s got a kind of vibrato to his voice,” Abraham said. “And he’s got a really kind of strong, confident delivery.”
If the song sounds a bit different from the rest of the album from a stylistic standpoint, it may be because it was written more recently than much of the album, coming together earlier this year. There was also a good reason Martin plays bass on “Isolation/Disconnection” instead of Bryant.
“When it came to ‘Isolation/Disconnection,’ (Bryant) kind of said, ‘Do you know what, that’s not my style,’ because it’s a heavier track,” Abraham said. “It’s kind of bordering on prog metal. He said, ‘I’m sure you could find a bass player who could do it better justice than I could.’ So, I thought that was very honest of him to say that rather than play it and maybe not put in his best performance. And I was happy to accept that. Alistair plays in Cosmograf with me, so there’s the connection there, and Alistair is a really versatile bass player. He plays in Fleetwood Mac tribute bands. He also plays in Muse tribute bands. He’s a full-time professional bass player with lots of different gigs and lots of different styles under his belt. He was only too happy to step in and play bass on that track and he did a fantastic job I think.”
Lyrically, I felt like the lyrics could apply to a musician feeling alienated from his or her audience, but Abraham said it was about loneliness. He said the lyrics were inspired by his 84-year-old mother, who lives alone and who is starting to deal with dementia.
“I kind of wrote it with her in mind, really, about how more disconnected she’s getting from the world,” he said. “She doesn’t live far from me, so I make sure I visit three, sometimes four times a week just to kind of see how she is. She has people coming in and helping her at home and stuff as well. It’s kind of frightening, because it’s one of those conditions that you know is only going to get worse. You just kind of fear for what it’s going to be like in the future, really. But that’s life.”
“Hole in the Sky” is an environmentally themed song with Atkinson on vocals and is one of the two shorter tracks on the album at 5:12. However, Abraham said he didn’t set out to make any kind of proclamation with the lyrics. The phrase “hole in the sky” just came to him while he was trying to fit lyrics into a melody for the song that he had been humming.
“It sounds like I’m making some big environmental statement. I’m not really,” he said with a laugh. “It just kind of popped into my head and worked well as a lyric. So then the rest of the lyrics just tend to flow from that.”
The album’s longest two tracks close out Origin of the Storm, starting with “When I Need a Friend” at just under nine and a half minutes. This is another of the album’s highlight tracks for me, with perhaps Jones’ most moving vocal performance. Abraham’s acoustic work and a tasteful keyboard part gives Jones plenty of space to deliver an emotional first verse and chorus. Mulligan adds tastefully modest drums and Arnold and Bryant add just enough to the song on piano and bass, respectively, to provide more flavor without overpowering it.
Lyrically, one might assume this was written about a particular person — maybe a best friend or a spouse. However, Abraham said the song is about mental health and finding someone to talk to about it.
“We’re very much encouraged to talk to people — talk to our friends, talk to our family, if we can, when we’re feeling low or when we’re feeling sad,” he said. “So, I tried to link it in a way that maybe your partner — your wife, your husband, whatever — is probably the best person to talk to, because that’s the person who knows you best, as long as you feel you’ve got a good enough relationship with that person that you feel you can talk to them about various things like that. But getting back to the ‘Isolation/Disconnection’ thing, just make sure that you don’t lock yourself away and just disappear into yourself.”
Abraham provides an emotional solo just before the midway mark that could stand alongside the work of Steven Rothery or David Gilmour. The song builds subtly in intensity in the back half, until just past the seven-minute mark, before downshifting to a lovely atmospheric bit with a spoken word section that manages to avoid devolving into schmaltz. Abraham said he added the spoken word section at the 11th hour after feeling the point of the song wasn’t quite being stated clearly enough for his liking.
The epic “Siren’s Song” is the album’s grand finale with a run time of just over 10 and a half minutes. Abraham said the song was inspired by seeing a Steve Hackett concert a couple of years ago.
“It really was just an attempt to create something that was typically prog, typically 70s prog sounding, and possibly in the vein of Steve Hackett — something Steve Hackett would record,” he said. “That music came about first. The lyrics came about — because it’s a tribute to proper 70s prog — there’s this old joke about any progressive rock music…well, that’s all music about wizards and goblins, and things, isn’t it? So I thought, ‘Why not satisfy that particular prog itch and go for lyrics that are kind of mythical and fantasy lyrics, really?’”
Abraham added that the sea theme was also a nod to the song “Epitaph for a Mariner” off of former Big Big Train vocalist Sean Filkins’ 2011 solo album, War and Peace & Other Short Stories — a record Abraham worked on.
The opening couple of instrumental minutes of “Siren’s Song” could pass as an Arena song, subbing in Abraham’s guitar tone for John Mitchell’s. Atkinson’s vocals and another beautiful, emotional guitar solo provide a hypnotic section of the song near the midway point before a tonal shift with heavier guitar and keyboards — almost a full-on gallop — takes “Siren’s Song” through some progtastic twists and turns. Another downward tempo shift and one final killer solo from Abraham, and you’re done with Origin of the Storm, leaving you wanting to start the whole thing over again — a trait of every great record.
The artwork for the album was done by Andy Tillison of The Tangent, who has been a repeat subject for previous stories here, including his recent Tangent for One release, To Follow Polaris, as well as his band’s 2022 album, Songs from the Hard Shoulder. I’m not sure I even knew Tillison did artwork, but he did a nice (and quick) job for Origin of the Storm.
“For the last few albums I’ve usually connected up with Robin Armstrong, my friend from Cosmograf, to do artwork,” Abraham explained. “I got to the stage where I was mastering this album in late August / early September, and we’d already agreed the 21st of October (release) date with the record company. And I thought, ‘Oh my god! Artwork! Artwork! Oh, how could I forget artwork?’ So then I’m frantically contacting Robin to say, ‘Can you do me some artwork?’ And you kind of feel guilty about asking, because it’s not just a front cover. It’s a whole package. It’s an eight-page booklet. It’s on body for the CD. It’s for the rear tray in the CD case. It’s rear cover as well.
“And he said, ‘OK, but when do you want it?’,” Abraham said. “And I said, ‘I want it by the end of September,’ and he said ‘Absolutely no chance. I’ve got too much on at the moment.’ I just sent a few feelers out to a few people, and one of them was Andy. I certainly knew he’d done some artwork packages for his own The Tangent albums, but I didn’t know that he did artwork for other people. Andy came right back to me and we had a video call. We hammered out the terms and everything, and he was happy. I give him his due. Within about two days he had front cover ideas to me and I loved them all, so I had to pick one. He ran with it. He just produced the whole package in less than two weeks. Fantastic turnaround. He was really easy to deal with. Great guy.”
Those who enjoy melodic progressive rock will likely enjoy this album. There’s plenty of atmosphere, but also some rocky moments that don’t quite stray fully into prog metal territory. There are a lot of great hooks in the choruses of this collection of songs, and the performances are spellbinding.
If you don’t know Abraham’s work, Origin of the Storm is a good place to start the journey. If you’re already a fan, there’s little doubt you’ll find a lot to love on the new album.
Abraham said he’s planning an album launch concert for February 2025 in Southampton, so if you’re in that part of the world at that time, go check it out. He added that he’d like to add a few more live shows to promote the release.
For more information on Abraham’s music, follow his official Facebook account. You can order the physical CD here. Abraham said he hopes the album will be available for digital download some time before Christmas.
Tracklist:
Origin of the Storm (4:21) - Instrumental
The Same Life (8:51) - Peter Jones on vocals
Chalk Hill (8:09) - Peter Jones on vocals
Isolation / Disconnection (8:51) - Mark Spencer on vocals
Hole in the Sky (5:12) - Marc Atkinson on vocals
When I Need a Friend (9:25) - Peter Jones on vocals
Siren’s Song (10:36) - Marc Atkinson on vocals
For my full interview with Lee, check out the video below or download/stream Episode 138 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast. As always, Lee was a lot of fun to chat with. He also spoke about his recent solo and Galahad gigs, his mother’s battle with dementia, and much more.
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