Mike Johnson - The Gardens Of Loss Mike Johnson

Co-founded in 1982 by Mike Johnson, Thinking Plague is a storied band, whose forty-five year history has seen it cleave consistently to the extreme limits of what is possible to do within rock music. Much of the music it released has owed more to traditions external to rock, such as folk, chamber music, and particularly, the avant-garde tradition of twentieth-century classical music. Its thread has always been twisted into a thicker yarn, variously labeled with terms such as ‘art rock’, ‘avant-rock’, ‘avant-progressive’ and also ‘Rock in Opposition’(RIO), a term associated with European outfits such as Henry Cow, Univers Zero, Art Zoyd and Present who fused elements and instruments from rock and 20th century classical music with compositional rigour and DIY aesthetics. Thinking Plague have often been cited as the leading light of the American arm of the ‘Rock In Opposition’ movement. Genre-defying and, above all, unique, Thinking Plague’s music can be described equally as post-rock and/or post-classical.

Leader and writer Johnson is influenced by harmonically adventurous twentieth-century classical music, as can be heard in the ambiguous tonality of the music, and the rigour of his dense, complex compositions. Johnson, like many rock musicians, is self-taught, but very knowledgeable, and his fusion of rock and classical music is as seamless as it is compelling. His electric guitar, whose hard-edged, mordant timbres cut deeper and more savagely than anything available to the classical arranger, doesn’t dominate the band’s sound, but takes its place as one voice among many. And for the first time ever amongst his 8 albums as leader of Thinking Plague, he has had the opportunity to use orchestral instrumentation as one of the pillars of this work! Perhaps this is the reason why this is a Mike Johnson album and not a Thinking Plague album?

Appearing with a number of alumni of ‘the Plague’, including vocalist Elaine diFalco and reedman Mark Harris included in the ‘band’, and also featuring a string and brass section, this very much has the musically dense and lyrically very dark Thinking Plague sound that Mike has always delivered!

"... some of the most rhythmically complex, texturally inventive, and melodically challenging popular music of the last 30 years, and somehow makes it all sound easy and natural."All Music Guide

"Thinking Plague are exciting and ridiculous in equal measure, as good Prog Rock should be."The Wire