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The middle-ages have recently become increasingly trendy and dozens of more or less talented groups of players are flooding the medieval markets. That early music does not have to come from this period, is shown most vividly from the renaissance trio Pantagruel. The two gents Mark Wheeler and Dominik Schneider weave their way around the wonderfully clear soprano voice of Hannah Morrison using authentic copies of historical instruments and thereby bring to life this era in such an alluring manner, that each of the eleven tracks brings delightful images to enchant the minds-eye of the listener. The often rigid dances of the late renaissance are here interpreted with such energy and vivacity, but without losing any of their elegance or refinement. The sound of this concept album that deals with Queen Elizabeth I. is also extraordinary; all of the pieces are audibly recorded live, without any post production modification, through which the whole disc gives the impression that the ensemble are playing right in your own living room. The love for detail shows not only in their cunning weaving of renaissance elements, but also in the beautifully designed booklet, which contains both the original English texts and German translations. This is a wonderful vision of the court of England’s Virgin Queen.  Peter „Pöda“ Sailer

Gothic and Renaissance do not seem to have much in common; in fact the 16th century saw the medieval period as something quite barbaric. Therefore it is even more surprising to see Mark Wheeler, one of the founding fathers of the gothic scene performing in the virtuoso renaissance ensemble Pantagruel, who with “Elizium” undertake an enchanting journey to the realm of Queen Elizabeth I. In the following detailed monologue the ex-Love Like Blood guitarist shows there are in fact links between the past and present, and between the most diverse of musical genres.

“Most rock fans are hobby musicologists, when you like a band; you want to find out what influenced your heroes. It was this search for their spring of inspiration that led me to renaissance lute music when I was 15 and I simply got hooked. I was a huge fan of 70’s rock guitarists such as Jimmy Page and Steve Howe, who claimed to be influenced by lute music.  Eventually I stopped playing rock guitar and began to study the lute in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and my room-mate was the brother of the guitarist from All about Eve and later Sisters of Mercy. He dragged me along to one of his brother’s gigs and my detour into the gothic scene began. The irony of my work with Love Like Blood was that I was playing Gothic guitar influenced by lute music and that Gothic guitar itself its roots in the playing of guitarists such as Jimmy Page who were also influenced by Lute Music.

In many respects what I am doing with Pantagruel would be impossible without my experience in the Gothic scene, hours of practicing and research are indispensable, but being part of a living musical experience is something that no source material can substitute. I think that is what makes Pantagruel different from many other early music groups, we are not interested in just recreating an historical performance, rather we see our concerts as invocations, where music and the visual elements create something greater than the sum of it’s parts.   During a convincing performance of the Ballad “Daphne” I feel I am in ancient Rome, Elizabethan England and somehow I can still somehow smell a waft of dry ice from my Goth-Rock days.

I have the feeling, that Pantagruel is a direct continuation of what I did on the CD “An Irony of Fate” with Love Like Blood. The renaissance is one of those eras similar to the late 1960’s when the human spirit struggles to break free of the shackles that society places on it. When late medieval scholars began to realise that life in classical Rome or Greece had been a lot better than under the iron fist of the medieval Papacy, it gave them a vision to create a new “Golden age” where man had the freedom to explore his own destiny

But that was all in the past….

In the end I got thrown out of Love Like Blood, because I didn’t accept the compromises the music industry wanted to impose on us. I think that if we have stayed true to what we had begun on “An irony of Fate”, we could have created our own individual style of Gothic Rock. But in the end it was not to be.

The motto from Francois Rabelais’s Book “Pantagruel”, “Do what thou wilt”, lies at the very core of our work. We take the surviving historical sources and using copies of historical instruments fill in the grey areas with our own ideas. The advantage of historical instruments is that their “limitations” are often their most beautiful qualities. Lutes are extremely quiet, but perfect for accompanying the human voice; if we used amplification it would destroy so much of their charm. Improvisation was an important part of musical life back then and that’s why our arrangements are constantly changing. Renaissance music is a dead art form; but we can dig up the remains, sprinkle the blood of living music on them and thereby revive the music of our forefathers.

We find it inspiring to see that men and women of that era felt much the same as we do today. That they shared the thirst for freedom, the knowledge that the darker parts of our psyche need their nourishment and that love will eventually find its way. It is music that allows a lot of personal input, the pieces being often just a rough framework around which we can let our fantasy run wild. It is also very intimate music, as we play without any amplification, the music travels in its purest form from our mouths and fingers into the listener’s ears. Our CD was recorded completely live without any overdubs using a pair of special microphones that capture the sound you would hear standing directly before us.

We are not interested in turning back the clock, there is simply so much fantastic modern music out there, that it would be fatal mistake to get trapped in the past. We simply believe that renaissance music still has a lot to say and we hope we can give our audience a different perspective on historical music. The Gothic scene has always shown an interested in classical music and I think we are doing something that hasn’t been offered to them before.

We organise our pieces live into non-stop medleys, so it was natural for us to conceive our CD as one long 70+ minute piece of music. The album should work on many different levels and although at first glance it seems to be centred on Elizabeth I, it is more an invocation of her magical realm “Elizium”. The influence of the renaissance was fading in most of Europe and England was the last bastion of a movement that had begun in Italy over a century before. Elizabeth’s reign produced so many works of art that still shape our view of England. Our opener “Come live with me” is the doorway to this magical kingdom of Elizabethan England.” Peter „Pöda“ Sailer