Moonfleet And Other Stories
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Click here to watch a 6 minute promo video about this album!  
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Click here to watch the videoclip of
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Moonfleet And Other Stories by Chris de Burgh Label: Ferryman Productions Ltd, Starwatch Released: October 15, 2010 (See release dates by country) First radion single: Everywhere I Go (digital release on October 11 2010) Special limited release: CD + German book (available in Germany) Special limited Saturn edition, includes 3 bonus live tracks + videoclips (only available at Saturn shops in Germany) Chart positions Click here to read the narration Reviewed by Jacqueline Ebner |
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Writing and recording his new album ‘Moonfleet & Other Stories’ took Chris de Burgh on the most ambitious, challenging and evocative journey of his long and successful career,
With sales of his albums now approaching 50 million worldwide, his unique, vivid slant on musical story-telling is already clearly established, but ‘Moonfleet & Other Stories’ raises the bar to unprecedented new heights.
It’s entirely appropriate to call ‘Moonfleet & Others Stories’ a tour de force, not merely since it comprises 20 original elements (including an orchestral overture), but because it’s a fully-rounded and realised musical suite based on the book from which the album takes its name.
Yet while the piece – a sequence of songs threaded together by narration – concerns itself with a musical and lyrical interpretation of the classic work (a tale of 18th Century smuggling, treasure, friendship, love and loss) by English novelist J. Meade Falkner, elsewhere on the album Chris tackles an extraordinarily diverse and wide-ranging variety of topics.
Leonardo da Vinci, the disappearance of childhood innocence, a short story by Oscar Wilde, a guardian angel, a war-time tale of ‘what happened next’ and, most topically and, perhaps, most emotionally, a statement about an atrocity in Iran during 2009, Chris has turned the full, sharp focus of his imagination upon them all.
‘Moonfleet & Other Stories’ is quite literally an epic, a collection of material driven by a desire to create music and lyrics that can become what Chris himself refers to as ‘films in the mind.’ His success in achieving precisely that can already be measured by approaches to make both a film and a stage musical based around his treatment of Meade Falkner’s tale. On another level, several of the songs in the ‘Moonfleet & Other Stories’ saga stand up and connect entirely in their own right, taken out of their wider context.
As if the complexity and scope of the subject matter wasn’t wide-reaching enough in itself, the musical backdrops to the material were equally exacting; classical, medieval, folk, chorale, hornpipe jigs and reels are all interspersed between ballads and pop and rock songs.
Chris is in no doubt about the enormity of the job he took on, particularly in order to realise his vision for ‘Moonfleet & Other Stories’ itself. “It’s way beyond the most difficult challenge, musically, that I have ever had before. It was tremendously complex. It was quite fun to do, but putting the whole thing together was immensely challenging. There were times where I was thinking ‘I am completely out of my depth here. I don’t think I can do this.’ I was trying to remain true to the story, but I am only covering the key moments of it. I initially thought the piece of music was going to be 25 minutes long – and it wound up being just under 50 minutes, which is pretty amazing. ”
Following the success of his previous ‘Footsteps’ album – a hand-picked collection of his personal favourites and songs which have influenced him as a musician and writer – Chris might simply have chosen to record a sequel in the same vein.
“Very clearly I had an option to take the easy road and come out with another ‘Footsteps’ album – which is probably going to be the next record after ‘Moonfleet & Other Stories’ – rather than having to spend six months writing an album of completely new material. However, that really appealed because I had got bored of the way people usually make albums these days; recording ten or 12 songs about completely different subjects, with no connection between them at all.”
Chris is justifiably proud of the results. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, but to have been involved in a book project which I’ve developed into a musical idea has been very exciting. For me, it’s one of those extraordinary things; if it’s successful, I shall of course be absolutely delighted and, if it’s not, I shall be sorry, but I will know that I have created something to be proud of – and I am very excited about transferring what I have done to the live stage, with all of the possibilities which that will allow.”
The ‘Moonfleet’ world tour commences in the UK during April, 2011, travelling across Europe and beyond throughout the year and into 2012.