Today, Tarja reveals the third single from her brand new live-art-album & video “Act II”. The enchanting live version of “Victim Of Ritual” stems from the bombastic live performance at Woodstock, Poland.
Having a capacity for 700,000 people, Woodstock remains one of the most iconic and gigantic festivals today. The powerful vibrations of thousands of fans coming together to celebrate their favourite musical heroes was perfectly captured during this very special Tarja performance. With its flow of range and variance “Victim of Ritual” once again shows why the singer is one of the most renowned Symphonic Metal artists. The song, originally from her worldwide chart success “Colours In The Dark”, gives a powerful taste of the forthcoming live release and can be found exclusively as bonus material on the mediabook of “Act II”.
Following up the worldwide top 10 video chart success “Act I”, Tarja and earMUSIC are happy to announce the release of the long-awaited follow up “Act II” on July 27.
Filmed during Tarja’s world tour “The Shadow Shows”, during which the influential heavy rock singer circled the world for 7 ½ times with over 300.000 km travelled and played over 200 shows in 40 countries in front of 1 million people, “Act II” consists of the singer’s very intimate 75 minute set filmed and recorded live at the Metropolis Studio in London, UK and the breathtaking live performance of one of her shows in Milan, Italy, and previously unreleased interviews and photo galleries.
The theatrical rock adventure “Act II” combines two incredible, yet slightly different live performances on video:
The first chapter, “Metropolis Alive”, has been filmed two months prior to the release of Tarja’s 2016 success “The Shadow Self”. 20 winners from all over Europe were lucky to witness Tarja’s intimate, yet rocking 75 minute set at renowned Metropolis Studios in London, UK where the singer performed songs from her then unreleased album – for the first time in front of an audience.
“Act II’s” second chapter has been recorded on November 29th, 2016 at the magnificent Teatro della Luna Allago in Milan, Italy and includes numerous hits from all four Tarja albums such as “Innocence”, “Die Alive”, “Until My Last Breath” as well as an incredible cover of Muse’s classic “Supremacy”. That night’s set list also enchants the soprano’s long-time fans with a medley consisting of the distinctive Nightwish evergreens “Ever Dream”, “Slaying The Dreamer” and “The Riddler”. All topped off with a remarkable acoustic set which presents Tarja classics in a brand new way.
Even though the shows deliberately differ in look, sound, approach to the music and adrenalin, both have one thing in common: from the very first to the very last tune, the state of the art production displays Tarja’s energetic performance and her graceful, charming presence.
“Live videos became more and more mere documentations focusing on a band’s performance in a remote, distant and technical way. The lightshow and the LED’s only support the band’s performance but have no significance of their own.
With “Act II” it is different. Here everything has a significance, every little detail is important because it is not only a live-recording, a live-documentation.
In the video, every song was treated in order to transport the feeling I wanted to express live at the show. As close as possible to the way the audience might have felt it that night. We used additional footages, used video snippets, photos and graphics and worked with lights, framings and reflections, changed colours and created moods, distorted pictures and inserted slides. And sometimes we kept the pure picture because itself it transported everything we wanted.
“Act II” is not a live-video, it is a live-art-video and you are free to discus it very controversially; what is exactly what I want.”
“Act II” will be released on July 27th, 2018 on earMUSIC as 2CD digipak, 3LP Gatefold (180g, black), DVD, Blu-ray, Limited Mediabook 2CD+2BD (incl. two full live shows filmed at Hellfest in France and Woodstock Festival in Poland as bonus) and Digital.
A wide variety of exclusive, limited fan items and bundles can be found on Tarja’s official web shop:
https://tarja.tmstor.es
https://tarja.tmstor.es
