What exactly is "T.Q.O.T.A."?
"The Quest Of The Argonauts" is the title of a musical project initiated by Francis Brown (Duisburg) and Thorsten Bartel (Oberhausen). Both being fascinated by concept-albums like Ayreon's ‘The Human Equation‘, Fates Warning’s ‘A pleasant shade of gray’ or Dream Theater’s ‘Metropolis Pt.2: Scences from a memory’, we always shared the dream to put some songs together and combine them lyrically in order to create a concept-album of our own.
After challenging experiences in our last band, we decided against the formation of a new band in the classical sense. However, the performances of Arjen Lucassen (e.g. Star One, Ayreon) led us to the idea of inviting ‘guest musicians’ to contribute to our songs. Eventually, we have written 12 songs, in which the ‘Tale of the Golden Fleece’ and accordingly the story of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ is told from the viewpoint of various characters.
Basically at home in the field of Heavy-Metal, the songs are designed to offer a wide range of styles, for instance classical arrangements play an important role. The main issue of the project now is to give every character his own voice lent to him by ‘guest singers’.
This is why we are looking for musicians who share our passion and enthusiasm for music and have a (semi-)professional attitude. First of all, the aim of this project is to accomplish something ‘special’ which goes beyond common performances of bands. Hence, our aim is NOT to end up with a self-burned CD-Rom that is stacked in a shelf as a ‘dust-catcher’ afterwards. In fact we endeavor to create something similar to Arjen Lucassen in terms of creativity, inspiration, motivation and a certain musical standard.