Shades of Silence

The aim was to make that music which we had never done before, to explore new grounds and thus again push our personal standards higher. The three composers in this case are Henry McIlveen, Rene Scholte and Martijn Spierenburg. The three had previous encounters in music in the bands Threnody and Gridlock. Spierenburg was asked to fill a void in the line-up of Threnody just before the second album. This actually resulted in forming a new band Gridlock. Gridlock was set up with the same ideas with which the later Shades of Silence was born. To make music without any precondition. The more Gridlock progressed the more we were confronted with the limitations of having only four instruments in the band. Thus the concept of Shades of Silence was created. We digged in the manners of writing for classical instruments, we have composed complete scores for an orchestra and have written lyrics and vocal scores for a female singer. We found her in Maaike Arkesteijn who has both classical and popular capabilities. The lyrics are written in a style which isn't strange to the people who are familiar with the music of either Threnody or Gridlock. We went and are still going at great lengths to create an atmosphere which is just right. The first album has a concept which is setted in the Great War. As most popular music based bands use midi-instruments to simulate an orchestra we decided that if we were to publish this album we would only use real instruments. For the power of the scores could only be delivered with the genuine instruments. So great effort was made to contact the right people. We succeeded to get musicians interested which include a choir of 75 people, drummers, guitarists and a great range of orchestral musicians like violinists, percussionists and flute players. Besides these people a great effort is made behind the scenes with help on the recording, vocal coaching and composition techniques. All in all about 200 people are estimated to try and bring the first release of this music see the light of day.