„These songs are a reminiscence to the past. To our past, when we were the „Sea Goat“, an extremely progressive band at that time in the 70’s, playing songs often of a kind the radio would not play. A unique feature was the Sea Goat instrumentation. We were a 4-6-member band with special instruments like cello, classical guitar, recorder and zither, which all was very unusual for a rock band at that time. And often our audience had to be patient: many songs had a duration of 10 minutes or more.
Our band name „Sea Goat“ was taken from the song „ The Song Of The Sea Goat“ by Pete Sinfield in his album „Still“, released in 1973.
When we started our first gigs in 1975, the „Sea Goat“ reflected much of what was going on in the progressive landscape of music that time. We admired bands like King Crimson, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Camel and other progressive bands but also songwriters like Nick Drake, Tim Buckley and even the classical writers of the ancient English foretime.
Still, copying songs of others was never an interesting option. From the very beginning we wrote our own songs in our own way, combining ideas and influences present in the heads and hearts of the members, which had come from distinct musical directions. We created our own sound, bringing together romantic harmonies, dark gothic and progressive structures with individualism in a positive way. From 1975 – 1982 „Sea Goat“ played many live-gigs in the south of Germany and split in 1982 after our musical preferences had become too diverse.
In 1980, when some of the band members already played in other bands and the Sea Goat was just before its breakup, Torsten recorded his first solo album „Those Days“ with the Sea Goat line-up and the first time with Walter Bauer, who joined the band just before the recordings of this album.
Then for long years the Sea Goat slept.
Decades later in 2006, at the birthday of Tommy’s 50est, we gave him a new recording of a song he had written in 1974, when the Sea Goat was just born. The Song „Morning Glory“ , one of our first songs ever, appeared in most of our live sets until our breakup.
And then, one year later in 2007, the old Sea Goat friends met at the 50th birthday of Klaus. He was always the one who kept us together, although he lived in Munich, far from the other „Sea Goats“. As a gift we spent him a 6 day vacation with the old band members. In 2008 we then went to Tata, a small village in Hungary. Tata was far away from our everyday environment. A nice town, not a touristic sensation but with a special house which can be rent for making music in private atmosphere. From the beginning, this trip had not been planned as a conventional holiday, but rather as a personal and musical experiment. The idea was to find out, if the old Sea Goat friends still would be able to make music as Sea Goat. Obviously, it was absolutely unclear if after all these years we would be able to find common musical paths and to jointly create own music. When we went to Tata, our cars were full of instruments and recording equipment to be prepared.
And then things happened which we never had expected.
Emotions came, feelings from the past, walking at the lake of Tata, joint cooking, discussions in the evenings in long nights, writing lyrics, discussing recording lines, hours to find out the sound of the grand piano to make it sound like live. It was a wonderful time and songs became birth with the togetherness of us. Basic versions of „Book Of Liberty“, „You’ll Never Know“ were completed, and many initial ideas and fragments for other songs were born. These days were intimate, reflecting the friendship we had in our younger years and all came back, the togetherness of longtime musical friends.
After this experience of total solitude, miles from anywhere in Tata, we repeated the experiment one year later in 2009. Seven days, just the four of us again coming together for just to write and record songs. Waves were whispering, we felt the glory of the morning, the sunrise and the breeze together and wrote new songs. „Fire Wheels“, „Seasons“ and „The Nearness Of You“ were born.
As a fourth etappe in 2010 we rent an outlaying house in Bavaria Forest to get the solitude again for music. „Water Pictures“ and „Lachrimae“ were started. For Lachrimae we only had the main skeleton, and many details were added later.
In 2011 and the years after we had not much time for our passion and it was just now and then when we came together in Heilbronn in a rehearsal room, used by Matze with his new rock band.
Always when Klaus from Munich was in the Heilbronn region for a few days a year, we left our families, disconnected our mobiles, were together again for just creating new songs and having some late beers in the evenings.
One of our most „popular“ songs beside „Morning Glory“ in the past of the „Sea Goat“ was „Friends“, which we first performed live in 1976. Friends was in our live set until our split in 1982.
After listening to some old live tapes we decided to record the song for the first time, 39 years after we had performed it first. During the Heilbronn Sessions 2011 and 2015, we recorded „Friends“ and most of the drum parts of „Lachrimae“ in Matze’s rehearsal room.
Last not least „Clouds“ is a short sidestep to a synthesis of classical guitar music with Sea Goat style music.
In this way after all these years the „Sea Goat“ came back to its origin.
The come together of four friends after long years with the intention to write new songs, lyrical songs, progressive in any way, romantic, virtuous but modest and without any focus or eye on contemporary music – we just found again ourselves and our joint musical soul from the past.
„Tata“ is a synonym for jointly making own music as a band, old friendship and new dreams.
This is what you hear now on this recording.
The „Sea Goat“ in 2016.
Enjoy!
Warm regards
Tommy, Torsten, Klaus, Matze