The Tangent

English progressive rock outfit the Tangent came together in 2002, led by vocalist and keyboardist Andy Tillison, already known from his work with Parallel or 90 Degrees. What began as a solitary detour quickly evolved into Tillison’s main creative outlet, yielding a steady stream of recordings. The first roster, including his former Parallel colleague Sam Baine plus musicians drawn from the Flower Kings, Van der Graaf Generator, and assorted other progressive acts, laid down the debut album The Music That Died Alone in 2003. Although personnel rotated in subsequent years while Tillison steered the project, the early quartet of releases still regularly featured a central trio of Baine, Jonas Reingold, and Guy Manning. By Down and Out in Paris and London in 2009, however, Tillison stood as the sole remaining constant member. In terms of subject matter he deliberately avoided the genre’s longstanding fantasy motifs and related conventions. After issuing the self-released A Place on the Shelf later that same year, the group resurfaced in 2011 with the conceptual Comm, one more title in the long sequence handled by German imprint Inside Out Music. Their fourth live set overall, London or Paris, Berlin or Southend-on-Sea, followed in 2012. The ambitious seventh studio album, 2013’s Le Sacre Du Travail, was presented as an electric symphonia and appeared alongside the companion disc L’Etagere Du Travail, which gathered leftover material and extras from those sessions. Tillison next unveiled A Spark in the Aether, framed as a direct follow-up to the band’s 2003 debut. Political themes centered on refugees displaced by conflict shaped 2017’s The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery.