Mystic Stories by Stonefield

The story of Stonefield began in 1984 in Winterthur, Switzerland. There the friends Juan Carlos Aneiros (Hammond & Keys), Manuel Rodriguez(Guitars) and Alberto Chenevard (Bass) had founded a band to set their own accents in the tradition of great progressive hardrock bands like Rainbow, Black Sabbath or Uriah Heep.

With ex-Black Angels drummer Brain Reber and singer Guido Gander, the line-up was quickly completed and the new formation began to play concerts all over Switzerland. For stylistic reasons, leaning more towards American-style AOR, Gander's involvement with Stonefield remained a brief episode.
After numerous fruitless auditions with various singers, Manuel Rodriguez met the Munich-based singer Ebby Paduch, whose vocals reminded him of Ronnie James Dio, during a session with the band Paranoid.
Now augmented by an ideal frontman, Stonefield quickly became a live band in demand in Switzerland, Germany and Spain.
In 1987 the five went into the studio to record their first album THE EYES OF THE DAWN. The imaginative songwriting, clever arrangements and virtuoso guitar playing of Rodriguez, already a live trademark of the band, also earned the album good reviews and established Stonefield as an insider tip throughout Europe.
After another year of touring in Switzerland, Germany and Spain, the band went back into the studio to record their second album, LIGHT OF LIES, which was released in 1990.
This album also received good reviews, but the winds of the times were now blowing in the band's face: the scene had changed, progressive rock no longer seemed to be in such demand. Discomfort spread in the band and its environment. It came to the, later quite regretted, separation from Ebby Paduch.

With ex-China singer Matthias Strübi, an old friend of the band, at the microphone, Stonefield worked out a completely new repertoire, with the idea of making a new album. But after a series of concerts all over Switzerland, the group felt that the old magic was gone. Manuel Rodriguez decided to leave the band in 1992, soon after Stonefield was history.
In 2010 Manuel Rodriguez returned to Spain from Switzerland. In the 18 years since Stonefield's breakup, he had consistently continued on his path as a musician, working for a long time as a sideman for various national and international artists in addition to his engagements in various band projects, releasing three solo albums and gaining experience as a producer.
However, the Stonefield story was still very present for Manuel and felt unfinished, especially because he had never been satisfied with the sonic result of the second album LIGHT OF LIES.
He was still in possession of the original 2-inch tapes from the studio, and noticed that the ravages of time were beginning to show on them. Tapes only last a limited period of time. Due to aging and poor storage, the magnetic layer may peel off the tapes, making them unusable. However, the tapes can be restored in a special oven. By "baking" the detached magnetic layer is welded to the carrier material again. After that, these tapes can be played back once or twice in original quality and can be digitized and restored.
In 2016, out of sheer curiosity, Manuel decided to mix one of the old songs in his home studio. Inspired by the desire to complete this unfinished work for him and thus make peace with the Stonefield saga, he experimented with it again and again over a period of two years and now acted as a producer with the necessary distance to the source material.
Still in contact with BSC, the label that had once released the Stonefield albums as well as others of his productions, he sent some of the new mixes to Christoph Bühring-Uhle. The BSC label boss was fascinated by the result. And so it came to pass that in October 2019, 30 years after the sessions for LIGHT OF LIES, the best songs from both albums can now be heard here for the first time in an optimal mix - at a time when progressive rock in the most diverse coinages is finally encountering the deserved attention again...a re-excavation of very special Swiss music jewels!