==History==Swede of the three names Ned Sylvan is most known as Steve Hackett’s frontman, who participated in his Genesis Reformed project, and his voice fits perfectly into Gabriel’s/Collins' dichotomy. But he has a different career behind his shoulders, both solo and Agents of Mercy and Unifaun. But let’s start from the beginning.
In fact, his name is Hugh Eric Stewart; he was born in the unhappy family of American tennis player Hugh Stewart and Swedish socialite Agnete Sylvan. When the couple broke up, the mother took her son with her to Sweden and renamed Christopher. And that’s where he started his way into music from prog-rock, and then he went through the punk temptations, the disco, and he went back to the original genre. Then there were solo recordings, performances in different compositions, and eventually Ned «opened» Royna Stolt from The Flower Kings, which led to their collaboration with the Agents of Mercy. That’s where Steve Hackett saw him. Since 2013, Ned Sylvan (Hugh-Cristopher renamed himself again in the mid-1980s) has divided his creative life in half between solo creations and Genesis Revisited.
Monumentata is his eighth solo album. The composition of the musicians who took part in the recording is impressive: the great bass player/sticist Tony Levin, and another stylist, ex-con of Kayagoogoo Nick Beggs, and bass player Jonas Reingold (Kaipa, The Tangent plus at least five names), and drummer Marco Minneman (The Mute Gods, Joe Satriani et c.) — just cream of progressive rock. The material was written from beginning to end by Sylvan, and he produced and compiled the album. Impressively, with such serious names, Ned himself is absolutely convincing as a musician (which is clearly visible in the Unkillable bonus — where he is responsible for the bass guitar and the drummers).
