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back to work
hey
after months and months of slowly rebuilding SQHQ (after we had a little flood in the basement),
we're now finally back to making music ;-)
still aiming for a release date early next year
for the new album "The Fifth Quadrant"
slowly but surely rebuilding studiostuff
stay tuned
BLOG ENTRY
so with 2023 in the can, it’s time for a little recap and and a little outlook on the future…
2023 saw the release of „At The Circus“, and it seems quite many of you liked it,
thousands of streams and YouTube views attest to that,
so THANK YOU!
2024 already saw the release of „A Collection of STARQUAKE Rarities“, non-physical only,
so NO CD, no vinyl, no cassette tape, only digital streams n files,
we’ll see how that’s going to take shape ;-)
also, we’re already working on new material for a new release,
not sure whether it’s gonna be called an album or an EP,
it’s going to be 5 (or maybe 4, depending on how you look at it) songs,
it’s going to be the 5th (or maybe 4th, depending on how you look at it) album by STARQUAKE,
and the dialectic of 4 vs 5 will be represented in the title as well:
The Fifth Quadrant is the Fifth SQ album, IF you’re counting
the remaster of MIKEY’s A Matter of Time album as a SQ album,
OR IF you’re counting the Rarites Collection as a SQ album,
a point can be made for both of them ;-)
anyway, The Fifth Quadrant will be counted as SQ5 ;-)
and we’ll try to have it ready for release in 2025 (more reason to be calling it SQ5) ;-)
demos for SQ5 are almost done, stuff might still change a little, but not too much.
rough ideas for more following albums are slowly shaping up as well,
so MAYBE we’ll be able to give you SQ6 as early as 2026 (no promise though) ;-)
stay tuned for updates ;-)
HERE IT IS
another great ranking
click to see the complete Top 100 of 2023 @ ProgRadio
we're Top 10
click to check out the video @ The Prog Corner
new album A Collection of STARQUAKE Rarities
coming to bandcamp, January 5, 2024
we're currently re-working this website
NEW ALBUM coming early next year
"old" album STARQUAKE AT THE CIRCUS still available ;-)
there's a wonderful German review click here
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FROM THE ARCHIVE...
here's a list of nice reviews we've received for
At The Circus PLUS some interviews we did
sorry, most of it is NOT in English
REVIEWS:
New Wave of British Heavy Metal (EN)
INTERVIEWS:
Rock Castle Franken (DE)
and you can click on this here pic 
to find a review from Rock It! magazine (DE)
some more FROM THE ARCHIVE:
What is STARQUAKE?
What is Neo70sRock?
Starquake is a name given to MIKEY’s studio project for the release of the „Times that matter“ album.
After MIKEY’s first solo album A matter of time (2010), that went mostly unnoticed, MIKEY went back to the studio and wrote some more songs.
By 2012 9 tracks were done, completed, mixed and mastered by the great Rich Mouser, known for his work on Spock’s Beard and Transatlantic albums among others, who MIKEY had met on a TA tour.
With an album ready for release MIKEY started looking for a label.
Many CDs and emails were sent out, replies were few, with rejections aplenty.
After two years a reply was received from Stefan @ PureSteel Records, an underground label in Germany.
Stefan suggested MIKEY record two additional songs, offering a 5 year, worldwide record deal.
Of course a bandname had to be found for the project, so after some brainstorming Stefan and MIKEY came up with Starquake, a name that reflects the power of an earthquake and the mystique of the stars and space alike.
Stefan also managed to get Rodney Matthews (known for Asia, Magnum, Diamond Head, Nazareth and others’ album art) to allow one of his paintings to be used as album art.
Times That Matter was released May 29, 2015
Neo 70s Rock is a style of music basically invented by MIKEY. Deeply routed in Classic Rock from the 70s, with love for Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Uriah Heep, the kind of music that MIKEY has been playing with BOXHEAD for many years. With great admiration for the amazing variety of rock found in the music of Queen, the heavy yet melodic style of IRON MAIDEN’s NWOBHM, Starquake's music is seasoned with a little prog rock, that MIKEY soaked up listening to The Beatles (yes, they were one of the first prog-ressive bands), Genesis, and most notably Spock’s Beard and, a little later, Gentle Giant. Thus creating a mix of heavy guitars, huge drums and sophisticated vocals, with quite some Hammond Organ, Mellotron and great arrangements, to take you on an impressive journey through the 70s and 80s with the modern sound of today.
"Weed for the Ears"
German Rock Hard magazine review for TIME SPACE MATTER
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ABOUT THE ALBUMS:
Times That Matter (2015)
11 cool tracks, short sweet ballads, heavy rockers, and a 21 minute epic
special guests on Times That Matter:
Sandra Wenzel: additional vocals
Jan "Donkey" van Meerendonk: all drums
Alex Kugler: guitars and solos
Andi Pernpeintner: Hammond solos
Michael "Wopsi" Wopshall: guitars and solos
Joe Wagner: guitars and solos
Corinna Reif: violin
TIME SPACE MATTER (2019)
Concludes the trilogy that was started with MIKEY's solo album A Matter of Time.
a crazy trip, more extravagant than before, with stops in Dallas, in church, in the year 1581, raging about cancer, travelling through time, space and matter.
band on TIME SPACE MATTER:
Jan "Donkey" van Meerendonk: drums
Alex Kugler: many lead, rhythm and solo guitars
Andi Pernpeintner: Hammond and piano
special guests on TIME SPACE MATTER:
Corinna Reif: violin
Sibylle Rupprecht: flute
Cleff Amend: trumpet
Joe Wagner: guitar solos on trax 2 and 3
very special guest:
Soulman as JFK on track 3
At the Circus (2023)
The album that almost didn't get released
and it doesn't really have much to do with the COVID pandemic
if you want to know details ask MIKEY ;-)
At the Circus is a loose concept album,
MIKEY was aiming very high,
like reaching for the stars, trying to write Sgt Pepper meets A Night at the Opera,
of course an undertaking like this is bound to fail, BUT
even though these masterpieces will never be reached, on your way there you create something very special,
an album with reoccurring themes, beautiful melodies n catchy hooks
arguably the best STARQUAKE album so far (yeah, they always say that) ;-)
CIRCUS artists:
MIKEY - all vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards n stuff except:
Jan „Donkey“ van Meerendonk - drums
Andi Pernpeintner - Hammond on 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 13, 17 - Hammond solo on 12, 13, 17
Joe Wagner - guitar solo on 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14,15, 17
Alex Kugler - guitar solo on 2, 5, 7,12, 13, 14, 17 - harp on 10
Reinhold „Oki“ Okon - vocals on 4
Gaby Weihmayer - duett vocals on 7
Michael Ocker - vocals on 12
Niklas Rölz - oboe on 4, 14
Martin Treppesch - bass and baritone guitars on 3
Jochen Schertel - guitar solo on 9
Florian Ebner - guitar solo on 15
string quartet on 6 and 17:
Versilian Studio Chamber Orchestra
arranged n conducted by MIKEY
CD artwork photos of the German Reichstagsgebäude by Jörg Braukmann (front, reworked inside) and Diego Delso (delso.photo)(back)
(taken from Wiki under CC)
A Collection of Starquake Rarities (2024)
15 nice tracks,
some rare, some previously unreleased, some edited versions, some NEW stuff
...and all STARQUAKE albums are dedicated to the loving memory of Martino Wenzel
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2022 recap
so 2022,
what a crazy year,
and that’s not only due to the COVID pandemic.
It started out quite good when the first CD master was done in February, and we really liked it.
We started promoting the album in the hopes it would be released very soon.
Unfortunately the record label had suffered a little those last few years, again not ONLY due to COVID, but we won’t go into details.
So the project was kind of put on hold.
February till May saw MIKEY working on a remix and remaster project for German band Major Knockout.
In June MIKEY had a minor health set-back, he suffered a double-pierced arm, when misstepping while setting up for a gig.
For the month of July MIKEY was knocked out almost completely by another health issue,
again, details shall remain untold,
if you really want to know ask MIKEY.
When on holiday in Italy in August, not only was MIKEYs wallet stolen, he also contracted that friggin virus.
Towards the end of the year talks with the label were picked up again, we talked about releasing Starquake At The Circus.
Label wanted to go in a slightly different direction, Starquake said OK, but we’d need some kind of amendment to the original deal,
label came up with a totally new contract that MIKEY after a lot of consideration just could not sign.
So we came to the conclusion we’d go our separate ways from 2023 onward.
So here we are, with a lot of music coming out in 2023, hoping you’ll love it as much as we do.
THANX for your continued support,
rock on,
MIKEY (Starquake)
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find all our music at bandcamp
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mail to info@starquake.de