«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)
Sail Away
Madrugada Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And all the things she grants me
Freedom is not among those things
And freedom is by no means free
Well, this is where it all begins
Begins to stretch and part
If we were to be changing things
I just want to sail away
From it all
Freedom is impossible
This I know
I can't find it in no bedroom
Or wherever it is I run and hide
And I never did find it
By anyone's side
Well this is where it all begins
The night pulled tight around me
Now that I have found this big love
I'm sometimes dwarfed in its company
I become aware of all the air that I displace
I was just the smallest of nations
The next day I go on lightly
And limitless within my limitations
I just want to sail away
From it all
Freedom is impossible
This I know
I can't find it in no bedroom
Or wherever it is I run and hide
No, I never did find it
By anyone's side
I just want to sail away
From it all
Freedom is impossible
This I
This I know
I can't find it in no bedroom
Or wherever it is I run and hide
And I never did find it
By anyone's side
Anyone's side
The lyrics to Madrugada's song Sail Away capture the struggle of finding true freedom in life. The singer speaks of their new found friend, who grants them many things, but freedom is not among them. They express the sentiment that freedom is by no means free, and that they wouldn't even know where to start if they were to change things. This feeling of being trapped is contrasted with the desire to sail away from it all, indicating a search for a new beginning and a fresh start. However, the singer recognizes that freedom is impossible to find in any physical space, such as a bedroom or through running and hiding. Similarly, they have never found it through anyone's side.
The lyrics convey a sense of yearning for something more, a yearning for something that is perhaps beyond reach. The singer speaks of love like it is an all-encompassing force, that is at times overwhelming, but which also allows for a sense of limitlessness within their limitations. The song conveys a sense of resignation, that freedom may be elusive, but the journey towards it is still worth striving for.
Line by Line Meaning
All I see is my new found friend
I am so enamored with my new friend and everything she is giving me that it's hard to notice anything else around me.
And all the things she grants me
I am receiving so many positive things from my friend, such as attention and affection.
Freedom is not among those things
Although my friend is giving me many wonderful things, freedom is not one of them.
And freedom is by no means free
In order to obtain freedom for myself, I would likely have to sacrifice something else in return.
Well, this is where it all begins
This is the start of my contemplation and reflection on the current state of my life.
Begins to stretch and part
As I start to think about making changes to my life, I realize that the process may be difficult and painful.
If we were to be changing things
If I were to make changes to my current situation, I don't even know where I would start.
I wouldn't know where to start
I am feeling lost and uncertain about how to pursue the changes I desire in my life.
I just want to sail away
My desire for change is so strong that I just want to escape from my current situation entirely.
From it all
I want to leave behind my current life and start fresh with a new perspective.
Freedom is impossible
Despite my desire for freedom, I have come to the realization that it may not be attainable in the way I had hoped.
This I know
My understanding of the limitations of my current situation is clear and unwavering.
I can't find it in no bedroom
No matter where I go or what I do, I cannot seem to find the freedom I am seeking.
Or wherever it is I run and hide
Even when I try to escape from my life and my problems, I still cannot seem to find freedom.
And I never did find it
Despite my efforts, I have not been able to discover the freedom I am longing for.
By anyone's side
I have not found the freedom I seek by relying on others to provide it for me.
The night pulled tight around me
As I contemplate my life and my place in the world, I feel overcome by the darkness and uncertainty of it all.
Now that I have found this big love
Despite my struggles with freedom, I have found love and that has brought me some comfort and happiness.
I'm sometimes dwarfed in its company
Although love is a positive thing in my life, it can also be overwhelming and seem to overshadow everything else in my life.
I become aware of all the air that I displace
As I navigate my life, I am becoming more conscious of my impact on the world around me and the people in it.
I was just the smallest of nations
I am insignificant in the grand scheme of things and my problems and struggles are just a small part of the larger world.
The next day I go on lightly
Despite my struggles and challenges, I am able to move forward with a sense of hope and optimism.
And limitless within my limitations
Although I have limitations and obstacles in my life, I feel a sense of freedom within those confines and am able to explore and grow in my own way.
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: KIMMO KALEVI KAUPPINEN, OVIDIU JACOBSEN, TOURAJ KESHTKAR, LISE CABBLE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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