Bass Player: Mark Hawkins

Uk Prog rockers, Solstice, released their ‘Silent Dance’ album in 1984, right when Prog was pretty much as uncool as you could possibly get! Despite it’s critical unpopularity, there was a New Wave of British Prog around at the time and bands like Twelfth Night, Pallas, IQ, Pendragon and Solstice could be seen and heard in the smaller venues around the UK. We now have a third wave of Prog making it’s presence felt across the world in the likes of Steven Wilson, Big Big Train and a host of others. What this has also done is offerd the old wave of new Prog bands a new lease of life. Solstice have recently released a new album, ‘Sia’, which balances some traditional ‘Solstice’ characteristics like female vocals and the ever-present violin, with some new production techniques and some more modern sounds and contemporary nuances in rhythm section.

All of this aside, the transcription takes us back to the orignial (recorded) line-up and the wonderful fretless bass of Mark Hawkins. The track ‘Earthsong’ is a sweet little feature for Mark’s bass and there is a little bass hook that pretty much defines the piece. It is a relatively easy read. The tune is in A minor and, consequently, there are no accidentals. Lots of long tones and only a couple of passages where there are anything other than eighth notes. And the tempo is not overwhelming.

The track is available on SPotify but we were having trouble with the link (it keeps copying only a 029 section of the song) so we have attached the whole of the Silent Dance album on a YouTube link. ‘Earthsong’ starts at the 6:30 point on the embedded video.