"An inspirational journey through the Arthurian legends told in our own words and music, but also featuring excerpts from the poetry of Tennyson, and including parts of the Prophecy of Merlin by Geoffrey of Monmouth. A musical feast proving that the old legends can be renewed for each successive generation. To keep it safe until the King's return" This project came about as a result of a longstanding and deep interest in Dark Age history and the vast wealth of material that make up the Arthurian legends. Keyboard player/vocalist Max Hunt (Fish, Steve Howe, Jon Anderson, Tantalus) teamed up with his wife and musical partner Gerlinde Hunt and Colin Masson and Cathy Alexander of the stunning and unique UK medieval/prog/folk rock outfit 'The Morrigan' to write, record and perform an album inspired by the Arthurian Legends entitled ARTORIUS. Covering Arthurian source material from 'Geoffrey of Monmouth' through to 'Tennyson', the album features bombastic tribal dark age war anthems through to delicate and sensitive renditions of many of the more romantic Arthurian tales. The ARTORIUS CD was launched at a special live event staged by the act in association with Planet Rock Radio, The Tintagel Arms Hotel along with historical re-enactors from the UK's Northern Mercinaries. This all took place during the annual re-enactment of King Arthur's legendary final battle, The Battle of Camlann at Tintagel, North Cornwall in August 2007.

Further performances are being planned for the year ahead, to include Camlann 2008, with shows featuring material from the CD along with arrangements of a selection of other Celtic and Medieval music. The project began in 2001 when Max, who regularly provided the PA system for the Northern Mercinaries annual Battle Of Camlann reinactment in Tintagel Cornwall, wrote some atmospheric music to accompany re-enactors in recreating battle scenes. Max, who regularly played with his own rock band Tantalus got to know Cathy and Colin from The Morrigan through the Hi-Note Music record company with whom they were both associated at that time. In the next few years Tantalus played on the same bill as The Morrigan several times. In 2006 Max finally decided to get on with his long planned Arthurian project and collated suitable material originally written for Camlann together with some older compositions that had been written for a planned project based on 'Lord Of The Rings' that never came to fruition, despite children's TV presenter Johnny Ball's initial involvement in helping to record a demo for the project. Max asked Gerlinde, Cathy and Colin if they would be prepared to collaborate on the project. There then followed an initial short bout of hard studio work that soon reached a hiatus due to Max getting extremely busy with other projects, including preparing for live work with Steve Howe and Fragile in Autumn/Winter 2006 and a short period of work with Fish in January and February 2007. After a seemingly long period of inactivity Max suddenly had time on his hands and had the totally insane idea of rushing to get the album finished in time to launch it at the Battle of Camlann in Tintagel in August 2007. An incredibly frantic period of activity ensued with everyone tearing their hair out to get it done and, despite the severe aging and near nervous breakdowns that this all caused, the process gave rise to an album that we are all extremely proud of in the form of ARTORIUS.

The Tintagel Arms Hotel in Tintagel, North Cornwall was set as the venue for the launch of the CD and Chris, the landlord, worked tirelessly to help promote the gig and got help from Planet Rock Radio in promoting the occasion. We also ran a stall at the medieval fayre at Camlann for 3 days promoting the CD and the launch gig. We got a tremendously enthusiastic response from re-enactors at Camlann and, as we were camping with them on site, we also managed to drink silly amounts of Mead and make loads of new friends including King Arthur himself who works for the MOD and lives in Norfork. We had a rehearsal in Tintagel the night before the show which was a disaster with us all forgetting things and Colin actually seemed to have forgotten how to play the guitar. We all realised what we needed to sort out and Colin managed to get the help of Graham at the Boscastle Witchcraft Museum to borrow an electrical supply and a corner to relearn how to play the guitar. The actual launch event was on Saturday 4th August and began soon after the annual Tintagel Summer Carnival Parade had finished. It was warm and dry which helped raise everyone's spirits. We had great lighting and sound kindly provided by Simon James of Monkey Events and the show got off to a great start with Colin reciting The Prophecies Of Merlin. We performed the album all the way through and got a great and somewhat surprised response from all who attended. Colin had thankfully remembered how to play the guitar, Cathy gave an awesome vocal performance and interlaced recorder parts with Gerlinde, and Gerlinde temporarily became the Lady of the Lake producing Excalibur from her cloak at the appropriate moment. On the penultimate number 'The Once And Future King' we were joined on stage by King Arthur and his retinue of dark age warriors leading us into our final number, Merlin and the Gleam. So all in all we had a great and memorable start to the project and are looking forward to expanding the live set and doing more shows.