In the past ten years, FUCHS, the project of multi-instrumentalist Hans-Jürgen Fuchs from Stuttgart, has developed into a constant on the German prog rock scene.
It all started back in spring 2010, when Hans-Jürgen Fuchs, who had released four albums together with his wife Ines in the 1990s and early 2000s, composed a number of original songs for a concept album about the escape of his ancestors from Silesia to West Germany. “I’ve always been a storyteller and simply had to tell this one,” explains Fuchs his motivation to record Leaving Home, which arrived at the stores in 2012. Even then the typical trademarks of his compositions were unmistakable: “I like big dynamics and different atmospheres, from very quiet to very loud, from slow to fast. In addition, I love interesting chord movements because you can use them to create fantastic sonic patterns. As a Genesis fan, Tony Banks is the master of chords to me.” All that and much more also features on Fuchs’s two subsequent offerings, The Unity Of Two (2014) and Station Songs (2018). For the subsequent concerts, a live line-up with experienced musicians from Stuttgart’s music scene and Fuchs on keyboards was soon established.
At the beginning of February 2020, Hans-Jürgen Fuchs performed the concert together with these musicians at the school where he works as a music teacher and for which he has already composed a dozen musicals that have also been performed by other schools all over Germany. The group played two sets at the sold-out assembly hall: the first four songs on One Lively Decade are from the beginning of the show, while numbers 5 to 9 are from part two, among them the 13:37-minute Here In My Void, which plays a special role in Fuchs’s compositional oeuvre, not only because it was performed live for the very first time: “The song raises the question which roads lead to happiness and how we can create something that allows us to go to sleep at night with a feeling of contentedness,” says Fuchs, who allowed his co-musicians even more room than usual during the recording of this song. “‘Here In My Void’ has an unusual amount of instrumental passages which allow every one of my musicians to perform a solo. Plus there’s a piano and synthesizer parts which sound like they could have been recorded by Nils Frahm. This number combines everything I like about music, and that includes, among other things, the many possibilities that longer songs offer.”
So are such extensive compositions a harbinger of Fuchs’s future? “Quite possibly,” predicts the project’s mastermind, “after all my colleagues make it easier for me all the time to arrange my material in a simple yet complex way because they’re all such outstanding musicians who infuse the songs with their own personalities. I feel that’s something you can hear on One Lively Decade, plus that almost physical joy of playing that lends a wonderful vibrancy to our songs.” No doubt about it: this is something we want more of!
Their new album will be called Too Much, Too Many – and is due to be released in time for the Night Of The Prog on 14 July 2023.
Band Line-Up:
Hans-Jürgen Fuchs: akustische & elektrische Gitarren, Lapsteel, Keyboards, Gesang
Ines Fuchs: Keyboards, Gesang
Andy Bartzik: Gitarre
Florian Dittrich: Schlagzeug
Mike Köhler: Bass
Baggi Buchmann: Leadgesang
Michael Wasilewski: Leadgsang
FUCHS Links
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FUCHS bei Tempus Fugit
FUCHS will be the second band to perform on Saturday, 15 July 2023 during our Night Of The Prog Festival! The Line-Up for Saturday is now complete – three more bands to be conformed for Sunday soon!
Tickets for the Night Of The Prog Festival 2023 are available in the WiV Ticket Shop!
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