Folk-Noir and Europe's Dark Troubadour..
claus_byrial@hotmail.com | Denmark | 04/27/2001
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Once again, Europe's Dark Troubadour, Tony Wakeford and his co-hordes in Sol Invictus, delivers a little Folk-Noir gem.Wakefords lyrics still centers around the regrettable erosion of European Culture and way of living by way of American Panzer-materialism, and these mournfull lyrics are backed up by exquisite, minimalistic neo-folk. The album comes with beautifull Tor Lundvall Art-work and a Lundvall poster, and even sets the lyrics of "Renaissance-Woman" Hildegaard Von Bingen to music on the track "O Rubor Sanguinis."..Another worthy addition to the Sol Invictus catalouge..."
A English garden
Andreas Faust | Tasmanian Autonomous Zone | 03/07/2010
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Although I rarely listen to Sol Invictus, when I do 'In a Garden Green' is usually the album of choice. It is perfect gardening music (plants and gardens being the unifying theme of the album), and I have good memories of gardening to it in the past.
'In a Garden Green' is a very inward-looking album, with the dominant feeling one of escape from the shallow vulgarity of the contemporary world into one's one garden. For that reason it could be accused of escapism, but whatever Wakeford intended when he composed it, I prefer to interpret its 'message' as one of inner renewal. Time spent in one's inner 'garden', with its labyrinths and impossible flowers, gives increased strength to fight the plastic modern anti-culture.
The finest song is 'No One', where Wakeford sings sadly (but ecstatically) of his own inner garden: "Stained glass light bathes these stained hands/Fountains and statues my only Motherland/A girl in green, with a golden mane/ Our chance is gone and won't come again." It reminds of T.S. Eliot's lines in 'Four Quartets' about the apple tree, children's laughter in the foliage, and the hidden waterfall. We all have a place inside which is lost to us, yet forever part of who we are..."
Track Listings (9) - Disc #1