‘To Follow Polaris’ is a new "full on" Progressive Rock album by The Tangent. That's not necessarily a surprise…that's what the band are known for. But at the same time, it's something else too. In a year when members of The Tangent could be seen onstage all over the world with Steve Hackett, Soft Machine, Karnataka, David Cross, It Bites, Cyan and others, it became clear that there was not going to be time to get together for anything more than one gig in April 2023. So the band agreed that leader/main writer Andy Tillison would keep the material coming and would make an album by The Tangent entirely alone. It would still be The Tangent. For One.
Produced between January and November 2023, the album features Andy using his mutliple keyboards system as normal, but adds to the mix his first ever released performance on Bass Guitar and his second on Stick driven (electronic) drums. Add electric and acoustic guitars and electronic wind controller, and this is a full band recording in every sense of the word.
Conceptually Andy claims the album is, ahem, "highly optimistic" but regular listeners to his work will anticipate correctly that this optimism will not be ill founded or over-easy and will be highly critical of obstacles to that optimism and the album will look as much into the dark as it does into the light. Overall its message is that regardless of the march of progress and great socio/political difficulties involving the apparent end of "Truth" as a benchmark, there are certain things that are slightly less transitory which can be followed and he uses the North Star, Polaris as his metaphor for hope and constancy.
