«Chimes at Midnight»
When Madrugada regrouped to celebr… Read Full Bio ↴Madrugada
«Chimes at Midnight»
When Madrugada regrouped to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of their classic debut album «Industrial Silence» in 2019, they quickly realised that interest in the band had not waned in their absence. It had, in fact, increased, not least on the European continent.
What’s more, they realised that they loved being back together. Being in Madrugada had never been quite this much fun.
Says vocalist and guitarist Sivert Høyem: «It was if as the last piece of the puzzle had snapped into place. I’d never felt so self-assured on stage before. It was no stress at all, whereas in the past it had always been very stressful to me».
The tour was a triumph, with the band selling out shows in the their native Norway, plenty of festival dates and a host of concerts throughout Europe, where the band now sold out halls that were twice the size of the places they used to play back in the day.
10 years on from when the band called it a day after guitarist Robert Burås passed, the three remaining original members – Høyem, Frode Jacobsen (bass) and Jon Lauvland Pettersen (drums) – felt rejuvenated and ready for more.
They wanted to play more shows. In order to do so, new music had to be made. The trip they were on couldn’t be strictly nostalgic. And so it was that Madrugada, a band that usually takes its sweet time to agree on just about anything, ran straight off the stage and back into the rehearsal room in December 2019.
Jacobsen: «We were on a tight schedule. We booked time at Sunset Sound Studio in Los Angeles at the end of February, and had about a month and a half to come up with the material and whip it into shape. It went rather swimmingly. We were still high from touring, raring to go».
Høyem: «Everyone brought something – melodies, ideas – to the table. And then we’d all be let loose on it. We had the «Industrial Silence» album in our bloodstreams after playing it live on the tour, and I felt there was a direct line back to our formative years. Everything came out sounding like Madrugada».
The band worked in their own rehearsal space/studio in Oslo, in another studio, Velvet Recordings, 45 minutes outside the city, and spent a further week woodshedding in Berlin. 70% of the material they came up with, is spanking new. But they also rescued a couple of older songs from oblivion. «The World Could Be Falling Down» hails from the time of their first album. «Slowly Turns The Wheel» first reared its head somewhere between the third and the fourth.
Lauvland Pettersen: «The process was very different from when I recorded my last album with the band [«The Nightly Disease», 2011]. That was a case of ‘second album syndrome’. We didn’t have much going in, and had to come up with the goods on the clock. This time the material was not only written, but thoroughly arranged too».
The band arrived in Los Angeles in late February, happy to be recording in a legendary studio where classic albums by Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, The Doors and the Rolling Stones had been conceived.
Lauvland Pettersen: «It was a boyhood dream come true, for sure. A terrific gift: I’m here, I’m with my dear friends and we’re having the time of our lives».
Producer Kevin Ratterman (Ray LaMontagne, My Morning Jacket, The Flaming Lips) was waiting for them, and the plan was once again to get in the flow and work fast.
The band had given themselves two weeks to put the music, recorded live in the studio, to analogue tape. They met their deadline, and a good thing too. No sooner was the last song on the album, «Ecstasy», in the can, before the world as we knew it shut down. It was March 2020, and the plan had been for Madrugada to go home, rest up for a week and return to do overdubs and mix the album in a studio in Silver Lake. Instead, they had to go home, and stay home.
Høyem: «It was a ‘last flight out of Saigon’ kind of scene. And the tickets weren’t cheap».
Up until this point, the making of «Chimes at Midnight» had been a whirlwind affair. When it became obvious that the world would remain in a state of emergency for quite some time, it was important not to lose momentum. The album would have to be finished by unorthodox means:
Namely by Zoom and via big screen-TVs, with Ratterman and the American team on one end in Los Angeles, and Madrugada on the other, in Oslo, Norway. Frustrating? Oh yes. But the esprit de corps remained strong.
Jacobsen: «The technology enabled us to do overdubs in real time, with Kevin producing us from the other side of the Atlantic. Unusual, to say the least, and quite interesting. But the process became a lot slower».
It goes without saying that Høyem, Jacobsen and Lauvland Pettersen are painfully aware that one of Madrugada’s founding members, Robert Burås, very sadly isn’t around to work his magic anymore. But what other developments have the nigh-on 14 years since their fifth and hitherto last album, «Madrugada» (2008), and «Chimes at Midnight», begot?
Høyem: «The songs are a reflection of who we are in the present time. We’re older. We’re all fathers. I believe I have a more nuanced view of life than I had 20 years ago, a greater ability to feel several things at once. Madrugada’s aesthetic was very New York City and Berlin, we were a punk band that played the blues. All those elements remain. But this time around it felt appealing to explore the more dreamy aspects of what we do. The city we recorded in encouraged us to do so».
Jacobsen: «Chimes at Midnight» is not a conceptual album, it doesn’t point in one particular direction. That makes it somewhat different, in my mind. But it’s made to played live, just like the other albums».
Lauvland Pettersen: «It’s got maybe more of a singer/songwriter vibe to it, I think. If I want to write a ballad and give it the full orchestral treatment, I’m welcome to do it. It’s been therapeutic too. The shows were pure pleasure, and the album’s given me a feeling of closure».
Høyem: «‘Chimes at Midnight’ was born of an atmosphere of true joy and goodwill. To me, it’s a passionate album».
The members’ respect for their shared history is at the top of their minds at all times.
Jacobsen: «I’ve always had romantic ideas about bands in general, and our band in particular. I never wanted to make music outside of Madrugada. I wanted to make it with the people I started out with».
Madrugada are
Sivert Høyem
Frode Jacobsen
Jon Lauvland Pettersen
with
Cato Thommassen and Christer Knutsen
Album discography:
«Industrial Silence» (1999)
«The Nightly Disease» (2001)
«Grit» (2002)
«The Deep End» (2005)
«Madrugada» (2008)
«Chimes at Midnight» (2022)
Biography from their site: https://madrugada.no/#biography
Theres's another band from the 70's that use the same name:
2) Madrugada was a band from Bergamo, Italy, formed around 1970, and had a long life that lasted until 1978. The group derived from some 60's beat bands like I Condor, that included bass player Alessandro Zanelli and keyboardist Franco Orlandini (from Mat 65 and who later worked with Equipe 84 and Claudio Rocchi), and later changed name to Le Lunghe Storie, and along them from Le Bugie and Gruppo 3. But the basic nucleus came from Terza Classe, which also gave birth to Perdio.
Though not properly a progressive rock album, their first one, only released in 1974 by Philips, contains some interesting parts.
It contains seven tracks, some of which were arranged and signed by Roberto Vecchioni (a singer-songwriter that's still very popular nowadays), while three songs were composed by Mauro Paoluzzi.
The first side shows some influences by a West Coast styled sound, with multivocal parts very well executed but not particularly original. Second side contains the long Mandrax, led by Gianfranco Pinto's keyboards, that's probably the best album track.
Except for a limited use of acoustic guitar on Uomo blu the band didn't use guitars and their sound was strongly based on keyboards and richly arranged vocal parts.
Second album came three years later, this time the trio was helped by some guest musicians like Lucio Fabbri on violin (Piazza delle Erbe and later PFM), the jazz saxophonist Gianluigi Trovesi, and Luciano Ninzatti (from Eugenio Finardi's band Crisalide) on guitar.
With a much better production and sound, this can be considered the best of their two albums, with long tracks like the opening Romanzen or Aragon showing a very good composition quality. Another nice song was È triste il vento, that had previously been played by another group from Bergamo that had a close connection with Madrugada, Perdio.
Like in the first album there are some odd different-styled tracks, like the folky Noter de Berghem and the silly Katmandu (that was also released on single with È triste il vento, but with no success), but Incastro can be surely appreciated by progressive music fans. Unfortunately it didn't have a good promotion by the record company.
In concert, Madrugada played on tour with Area, Claudio Rocchi and Biglietto per l'Inferno, and in Lugano (Switzerland) with Kevin Ayers. Moreover they played in many concerts for political movements like Avanguardia Operaia and the Radical Party and the Re Nudo magazine. The band split at the end of the 1970s.
Pinto and Zanelli collaborated with Mauro Paoluzzi in his shortlived Pangea project, which produced only a promotional album in 1976.
Keyboardist Pinto has collaborated with many Italian and international artists (Patty Pravo, Roberto Vecchioni, Adriano Pappalardo, Riccardo Fogli, Gianna Nannini, Brian Auger), and in the late 90's with the reformed progressive group Perdio.
He works in a music school in the Parma area and still plays now in studio, with live bands and in the piano bar circuit.
Bass player Billy Zanelli formed the semi-punk group Judas, with an album on Spaghetti label in 1978, and later played with Roberto Vecchioni.
Discography
LPs
Madrugada (Philips, 1974)
Incastro (Philips, 1977)
CDs
Madrugada (AMS/BTF, 2006 / Universal, 2010)
Incastro (AMS/BTF, 2006 / Universal, 2010)
Singles
Katmandu / È triste il vento (Philips, 1977)
Hold on to You
Madrugada Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Have a big slice of the city
Get the upper hand
While you're still pretty
But you know what we're like
No, they will never respect you
The way you want them to respect you
But I'm
I'm gonna hold on to you
I'm gonna hold on to you
You
Your cracked up shell
A dead opera house
You give yourself to them now
In a game of cat and mouse
From the storyboard
To the bedroom scene
Through eleven World Wars
Other people you have been
Well I'm
Gonna hold on to you
I'm gonna hold on to you
You
Oh I'm
Gonna hold on to you
I'm gonna hold on to you
You
I can come to terms
With slowly going mad
Things we used to fear in the dark
And what ever lies beyond that
But I've come to resemble
My own shadow
As it falls into the sidewalk
I'm no longer anyone I know
No-one here reminds me of you
Yet I see no-one else
On the crowded sidewalk
Well I'm
I'm gonna hold on to you
I'm gonna hold on to you
You
Oh I'm
I'm gonna hold on to you
I'm gonna hold on to you
Hold on to you
Hold on to you
I'm gonna hold on to you
In Madrugada's song "Hold on to You," the lyrics speak to the pressure to succeed in society and the fear of losing oneself in the process. The opening lines encourage taking the "forward path" and seizing opportunities while still young and attractive, but the next lines caution that others will not respect one in the way desired. The singer then declares their intention to hold on to someone despite feeling like they are losing themselves and their identity in the process. The chorus repeats this declaration, expressing the desire to hold onto the person even as the world changes around them.
The imagery of the "cracked up shell" and "dead opera house" suggests a building or person that has seen better days and is now compromised or broken. Despite this, they are still giving themselves to others, playing a "game of cat and mouse." The lines "from the storyboard / to the bedroom scene / through eleven World Wars / other people you have been" speak to the way life can feel like a movie, constantly changing and presenting new roles to play.
The final verse acknowledges the fear of losing one's mind, but also the fear of losing one's sense of self as they become more and more like their own shadow. The singer sees no one else on the crowded sidewalk who reminds them of their loved one, yet they hold onto them despite the changes they both undergo.
Overall, "Hold on to You" is a poignant meditation on the fear and uncertainty of living in a changing world, and the desire to hold onto what is important in the midst of all that.
Line by Line Meaning
Take the forward path
Continue moving forward in life
Have a big slice of the city
Experience everything the city has to offer
Get the upper hand
Assert yourself and gain advantage
While you're still pretty
While you are still young and attractive
But you know what we're like
You understand how people are
No, they will never respect you
Others may not respect you as much as you want or think you deserve
The way you want them to respect you
You may have specific expectations for how others should treat and value you
I think it's very well understood
The artist acknowledges and accepts this reality
But I'm
Despite this, the artist is
I'm gonna hold on to you
The artist will hold on to you and not let go
You
Referring to the person being addressed
Your cracked up shell
Your outward appearance or facade has been damaged
A dead opera house
A metaphor for something grand and beautiful that has been left to decay
You give yourself to them now
You are giving into the expectations and demands of others
In a game of cat and mouse
A manipulative competition or power struggle
From the storyboard
From the plans and expectations
To the bedroom scene
To the most intimate moments
Through eleven World Wars
Through many trials and difficult times
Other people you have been
You have changed and taken on different identities for the sake of others
Well I'm
The artist is
Gonna hold on to you
Holding onto you tightly
Oh I'm
The artist is
Gonna hold on to you
Holding onto you tightly
You
Referring to the person being addressed
I can come to terms
I can accept and be at peace with
With slowly going mad
With the potential of losing one's mind over time
Things we used to fear in the dark
Deep-seated fears and anxieties
And what ever lies beyond that
The unknown beyond our fears
But I've come to resemble
The artist has become like
My own shadow
The darker or unacknowledged parts of oneself
As it falls into the sidewalk
As it merges with the harsh realities of everyday life
I'm no longer anyone I know
The artist no longer recognizes themselves
No-one here reminds me of you
The artist cannot find anyone who reminds them of you
Yet I see no-one else
Despite looking for someone else, the artist sees no one else
On the crowded sidewalk
In the midst of the busy, hectic world
Well I'm
The artist is
I'm gonna hold on to you
The singer will hold on to you and not let go
I'm gonna hold on to you
The singer will hold on to you and not let go
Hold on to you
Repeat of the singer's intention to hold onto you tightly
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: ROBERT BURAS, SIVERT HOYEM, FRODE JACOBSEN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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