The Sham Mirrors
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The Sham Mirrors
''The Sham Mirrors'' is the third studio album by Norwegian avant-garde metal band Arcturus. It was released on April 9, 2002. ''The Sham Mirrors'' is a departure from the band's previous albums, featuring a much more modern, space-influenced sound, as opposed to the layered, classical melodies of 1997's '' La Masquerade Infernale''. The album contains elements of trip hop, ambient music and electronica in addition to the band's usual progressive black metal sound. Lyrically, the album deals with abstract science fiction-themed subjects, a stark contrast to the theatrical and Satanic lyrics of the band's earlier work. The album cover depicts a model drawing of the upper part of the Apollo spaceship. This is the last album to feature Kristoffer Rygg on vocals. Track listing Personnel ;Arcturus * Kristoffer Rygg (credited as "Trickster G. Rex") - vocals, producer, engineer * Knut M. Valle - electric guitar, engineer * Dag F. Gravem - bass guitar * Steinar Sverd J ...
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Arcturus (band)
Arcturus is a Norwegian avant-garde metal band formed in 1991. Their name, which means "Bear Guardian", references the Behenian fixed star Arcturus. History The band has released five official full-length albums. Arcturus has experimented throughout their career, extracting influences and incorporating elements from all over the musical spectrum including black metal and classical music, but the band was rooted as a metal outfit. Early days The original line-up was changed when bassist/vocalist Marius Vold (formerly of Thorns) was taken out of the band. The band soon became labeled a black metal supergroup, consisting of Kristoffer "Garm" Rygg on vocals, Carl August Tidemann on guitar, Skoll on bass and the two other original members, Hellhammer on drums and Steinar Sverd Johnsen as main composer/keyboard player. In 1994, Samoth played guitars on the EP ''Constellation'' and released it on his record label, Nocturnal Art. Post-Garm era After three full-length albums, Rygg l ...
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Steinar Sverd Johnsen
Steinar Sverd Johnsen is a Norwegian keyboardist and composer, born 1972. Sverd plays keyboards and synthesizers in Arcturus and was also the main composer for the band. He formed the band with Jan Axel Blomberg (also known as Hellhammer) of Mayhem in 1987, originally under the moniker Mortem (where he played guitar). The band split up in April 2007, but reformed in 2011. In 1998, Sverd was recruited by the band, The Kovenant, known at the time as Covenant, along with Hellhammer. After the release of the album ''Nexus Polaris'', Sverd and the band parted ways. Sverd has also been a guest on a few releases by prominent Norwegian black metal bands, Ulver and Satyricon. Discography With Mortem * ''Slow Death'' (demo, 1989) * ''Slow Death'' (EP, 1990) With Arcturus *''Promo 90'' (Demo, 1990) *''My Angel'' (EP, 1991) *''Constellation (EP, 1994) *''Aspera Hiems Symfonia'' (full-length, 1995) *''La Masquerade Infernale'' (full-length, 1997) *''Disguised Masters'' (compilation, 1999) *' ...
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Arcturus (band) Albums
, - bgcolor="#FFFAFA" , Note (category: variability): , , H and K emission vary. Arcturus is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Boötes. With an apparent visual magnitude of −0.05, it is the third-brightest of the individual stars in the night sky, and the brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere. The name Arcturus originated from ancient Greece; it was then cataloged as α Boötis by Johann Bayer in 1603, which is Latinized to Alpha Boötis. Arcturus forms one corner of the Spring Triangle asterism. Located relatively close at 36.7 light-years from the Sun, Arcturus is a single red giant of spectral type K1.5III—an aging star around 7.1 billion years old that has used up its core hydrogen and evolved off the main sequence. It is about the same mass as the Sun, but has expanded to 25 times its size and is around 170 times as luminous. Its diameter is 35 million kilometres. Thus far no companion has been detected. Nom ...
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Hugh Steven James Mingay
Hugh Steven James Mingay (born 12 December 1974), also known by his stage name Skoll, is a heavy metal musician. Musical career He became a member of the Norwegian band Arcturus from 1995 to 2000 for the recording of the album ''Aspera Hiems Symfonia'', but he left the band just before ''The Sham Mirrors'' was released and was credited as a session member. Skoll came back to the band in 2002 and remained there until the band broke up in 2007. Hugh has also been the bassist for the Norwegian band Ulver between 1994 and 1998 and was formerly a member of the band Ved Buens Ende, under his pseudonym Skoll. Discography With Arcturus *''Aspera Hiems Symfonia'' (Studio Album, 1996) *''La Masquerade Infernale'' (Studio Album, 1997) *''The Sham Mirrors'' (Studio Album, 2002) *''Aspera Hiems Symfonia/Constellation/My Angel'' (Compilation, 2002) *''Sideshow Symphonies'' (Studio Album, 2005) *''Shipwrecked in Oslo'' (Live Album, 2005) * '' Arcturian'' - (Studio Album, 2015) With ...
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Mathias Eick
Mathias Eick (born 26 June 1979) is a Norwegian jazz musician, and the brother of the jazz musicians Johannes Eick and Trude Eick. He is mainly known from his releases on the jazz label ECM Records. His main instrument is the trumpet, but he also plays upright bass, vibraphone, piano and guitar. He has performed with several well-known music groups and musicians, e.g. Jaga Jazzist, Manu Katché, and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra together with Chick Corea and Pat Metheny. Besides this he is also known for his collaboration with Norwegian singer-songwriter Thomas Dybdahl, and recordings with the Norwegian bands Turboneger, DumDum Boys, Motorpsycho, D'Sound and Bigbang. Career After finishing high school, he started on the Music program at the ''Toneheim Folkehøyskole'' near by Hamar, followed by studies on the Jazz program at Trondheim Musikkonsevatorium. Born in 1979 Eick has marvellous range of achievements to show for himself: in 2007 he won the International Jazz Talent ...
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Ihsahn
Vegard Sverre Tveitan (born 10 October 1975), better known by his stage name Ihsahn (), is a Norwegian multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and composer, best known for his work with black metal band Emperor. Tveitan is also a founding member of Thou Shalt Suffer, where he played guitar and keyboard in addition to vocal duties, and Peccatum, a project in collaboration with his wife and fellow musician Heidi Solberg Tveitan, also known as Starofash. Since 2006, Tveitan has primarily devoted himself to solo albums and occasional guest appearances. Beyond the characteristics typically associated with metal music, Tveitan's musical style also includes classical, industrial, and progressive elements. He is a progenitor of the symphonic black metal genre. Emperor's final album, '' Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise'', composed by Ihsahn, epitomizes the genre. Biography Tveitan was born in Notodden, Norway, where he grew up on a large rural farm. He began playing piano at ag ...
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Percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cy ...
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Drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching Drum stick, drumsticks, one in each hand, and uses their feet to operate a foot-controlled hi-hat and bass drum pedal. A standard kit may contain: * A snare drum, mounted on a snare drum stand, stand * A bass drum, played with a percussion mallet, beater moved by a foot-operated pedal * One or more Tom drum, tom-toms, including Rack tom, rack toms and/or floor tom, floor toms * One or more Cymbal, cymbals, including a ride cymbal and crash cymbal * Hi-hat cymbals, a pair of cymbals that can be manipulated by a foot-operated pedal The drum kit is a part of the standard rhythm section and is used in many types of popular and traditional music styles, ranging from rock music, rock and pop music, pop to blues and jazz. __TOC__ ...
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Jan Axel Blomberg
Jan Axel Blomberg (born 2 August 1969) is a Norwegian heavy metal drummer known professionally as Hellhammer. He is best known as the drummer of Mayhem, which he joined in 1988. In 1987 Blomberg formed the avant-garde black metal band Arcturus (under the name Mortem) with Steinar Sverd Johnsen, which broke up in April 2007 and reunited in 2011. He named himself after the Swiss extreme metal band Hellhammer. Praised as a talented musician, Blomberg is a three-time winner of the Spellemannprisen award. Early life As a child, Blomberg's main interests were football (soccer) and wrestling. At first he had no interest in drums or drumming, but as music became more appealing to him he started to find the different instruments interesting, which eventually led to an interest in drums. His grandparents purchased him his first three drum kits; the first one was a four-piece jazz kit. With these he began learning how to play drums by playing along with albums he listened to. He was int ...
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Keyboard Instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. Today, the term ''keyboard'' often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics, phrasing, shading, articulation, and other elements of expression—depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument. Another important use of the word ''keyboard'' is in historical musicology, where it means an instrument whose identity cannot be firmly established. Particularly in the 18th century, the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the early ...
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Bass Guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and typically four to six strings or courses. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music. The four-string bass is usually tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar (typically E, A, D, and G). It is played primarily with the fingers or thumb, or with a pick. To be heard at normal performance volumes, electric basses require external amplification. Terminology According to the ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', an "Electric bass guitar sa Guitar, usually with four heavy strings tuned E1'–A1'–D2–G2." It also defines ''bass'' as "Bass (iv). A contraction of Double bas ...
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Electric Guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic guitar exist). It uses one or more pickups to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals, which ultimately are reproduced as sound by loudspeakers. The sound is sometimes shaped or electronically altered to achieve different timbres or tonal qualities on the amplifier settings or the knobs on the guitar from that of an acoustic guitar. Often, this is done through the use of effects such as reverb, distortion and "overdrive"; the latter is considered to be a key element of electric blues guitar music and jazz and rock guitar playing. Invented in 1932, the electric guitar was adopted by jazz guitar players, who wanted to play single-note guitar solos in large big band ensembles. Early proponents of the electric guitar on ...
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