Gazpacho

Progressive rock outfit Gazpacho came together in Oslo, Norway, during 1996. Jon-Arne Vilbo and Thomas Andersen, who had been childhood friends and earlier bandmates in Delerium, reconnected after a gap of several years and assembled the lineup by bringing in Jan Henrik Ohme on vocals, Lars Erik Asp on drums, Kristan Torp on bass, and Mikael Krømer handling violin and mandolin.

In 2002 the group entered a song contest with the track “Sea of Tranquility,” securing first place. Their subsequent submission earned second place and opened the door for the release of the Get It While It’s Cold (37°C) EP via MP3.com. One year later they issued their debut full-length Bravo, which incorporated five songs from that earlier EP and earned them an appearance at the Marillion Convention Weekend. During 2004 they tracked When Earth Let’s Go under the guidance of Steve Lyon, whose prior production credits include the Cure and Depeche Mode. Although the sessions failed to yield a record contract, the band’s shared tours with Marillion paved the way for their third album, Firebird, to appear on the Marillion-affiliated Racket Records imprint in 2005. Their following effort, Night, arrived in 2007 and coincided with their inaugural headline slot at Boerderiji in the Netherlands.

The sixth album took the form of an ambitious concept piece centered on the experiences of navigator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who survived a crash landing in the Sahara desert while flying from Paris to Saigon. The next release, Missa Atropos in 2010, likewise functioned as a concept album, this time drawing on the Greek goddess of that name. Gazpacho shifted approach for March of Ghosts, presenting the material instead as a set of short stories. Activity remained steady in the ensuing years, marked by the arrival of Demon in 2014 and Molok in 2015 together with repeated European touring.

Following a three-year hiatus from the studio, the band returned in 2018 with Soyuz, their tenth studio album. The record pulled together an array of thematic threads that encompassed Hans Christian Andersen, a doomed Russian space capsule, and Tibetan Buddhist funeral practices.