Country of Origin: France Format: CD Record Label: Musea Records Catalogue #: FGBG 4336.AR Year of Release: 2000 Time: 60:45 Info: Musea Records

Well, it isn't as bad as the title promises. But the mixture of styles and the often very freestyle jazz makes it hard to denote this as prog-rock.

This music isn't my thing. Jazzy, heavely based on drums and bass, it just murmurs through your speakers. Nothing much going on most of the time, ideal music to play while giving a dinner party. And that's not what my style is.

Country of Origin: Brasil Format: CD Record Label: Musea Catalogue #: FGBG 4318.AR Year of Release: 2000 Time: 57:18 Info: Musea Records

Tracklist:Daydream (8:30), The Dawn After The Storm (8:53), Never (6:07), Tocando Você (6:54), The Fortress (5:18), Preludio de Sevilla (2:07), The Sight (4:45), O Dom de Voar (6:38), Discover (7:52)

Good quality Brasilian keyboard dominated - Camel style - mostly instrumental progressive Rock. Solid production and good playing. But nothing really spectacular in my opinion.

The opening track Daydream is definitely Camelesque, a blend between modern and seventies Camel. Good solid playing, both on the guitar and on the keyboards. A bit of a Nolan-feeling is added due to the powerful drive the song has. The keyboards throughout the album are the original analoge synths of back-then, including mini-Moog. Excellent track.

Keyboards are dominantly present on the whole album since the keyboard player is the main composer. This can be well heard in the next track The Dawn After The Storm, with a New-Age style opening, featuring some ABBA-style main melody, like Vangalis on a bad day...not too succesfull compared to the opening track if you ask me. No, this is just too melodic for me. Fortunately the second section is more powerful with some more biting keys and guitar and a return to the good ol' desert animal.

Never features vocals, mature, and they too sound a bit like Latimer's. In this track they almost capture the atmosphere of the 70's Camel, that floating feeling you get from Camel, with the sharp electric guitar over dreamlike melodies and a very varied rhythm, but with you as a listener hardly noticing the changes....

A Steve Howe -like acoustic guitar track follows (as in: the quiet tracks of the man's solo work), even featuring some mandolin. This is followed by a more piercing electric guitar in a rhythm now well known from Rajaz.

OK, get the picture now? Just guess how the next track sounds? Preludio is a skillfully played Spanish guitar piece. Always makes me jealous to hear somebody play stuff like that while I'm still searching for the E-chord ;-). Now let's skip the rest of the songs - they can be described just like the other ones - and go to the conclusion.

Good solid melodies, heavily based on above mentioned group. So why a grade below the "DPRP Recommended" tag? Because I heard it all before, and because the album is too quiet. No real climax or something of the sort. Too bad, since with one or two uptempo tracks and a bit more variation in style I would have definitely added the extra half to gain that wanted tag. However, die-hard Camel fans for sure should try to obtain this album, they will get a lot of pleasure from it. The more heavy proggers will fall asleep.

Conclusion: 7.5 out of 10.

Country of Origin: UK Format: CD Record Label: Carbon 7 Catalogue #: C7-044 Year of Release: 1999 Time: 57:56 Info:

There's still a lot for me to learn. Not very long ago I was taught about RIO - Rock In Opposition. I didn't know about the definition, and because of my review of Belgian / American band Present's latest album No. 6, in which I said the music they played was new to me, I received several e-mail messages from people telling me more about Present and RIO. I realized that the most popular forms of progressive rock, which are covered here on DPRP well I think, have more related musical styles than I thought, and that people visiting DPRP are also interesting in reading about it, while the DPRP team has not paid any attention to it at all. We have to broaden our horizon!
Carbon 7 is a Belgian record label that is very good at broadening one's horizon. After my review of Present's No. 6, I am going to tell you about a band called Hardscore in a later issue, but now it's Siren Circus.

New Music is what this music is called, apparently. My theoretical knowledge about this is non-existent, so please let me know if I am wrong here, but the main characteristic of this kind of music is the freedom of composition. No obvious time signatures, weird and complex melody lines or hardly any at all. It's a form of art rather than something you could describe as good or bad music. Siren Circus comprises of two British sisters, Cathryn and Lucie Robson. The booklet states the songs are "composed, interpreted and performed" by them alone, with only two others guesting on vocals. Before I heard the album, I understood the album was very vocal-oriented, more like poems. The title helped. Reading the lyrics, too. The music is mainly piano, synthesizers, and several sorts of percussion. All in service of the lyrics and the songs on the whole.

The vocals are very diverse. The sisters are almost reciting the lyrics, or poems, using their trained voices to produce weird melody line, ranging from sweet children's voices, to angry women's cries, covering screams not unlike Kate Bush, and even higher...
Some of the compositions sound like they're part of a cabaret performance. The lyrics, however, are not humouristic but very melancholic instead. Most of the songs sound very melancholic, by the way. Some are sweeter but with lyrics to give you shivers, and others almost menacingly thundering. Weird, definitely weird. The songs are all small pieces of art, not something you put on just to have some music on. You have to give this the same kind of attention as when looking at a painting, for example.

At times, I have to think of Peter Hammill. I guess he was one of the first to put his wonderful poems to music while they seem so unsuitable for doing so.
And by saying this, I have at last found a reference and recommendation as well: if you like Hammill, try this! As you have probably noticed, I find it very hard to describe this music. It's definitely not for the average listener's ear. But if you're looking for something to broaden your musical horizon - start here.
For myself, I am still having some problems with New Music. I have to get used to it, hear more about it. The concluding mark is based on what I think now and probably would have been different if I knew more about it. But I am learning...

Conclusion: 5 out of 10.

Country of Origin: UK Format: CD Record Label: Blueprint / Voiceprint Catalogue #: BP 031 CD Year of Release: 1999 Time: 62:06 Info: Voiceprint

I'm usually quite fond of CDs with recordings from some artist's dark and mysterious past. I am not a great fan of Peter Banks, only because I don't know very much more about the man than that he was the first Yes guitarist. I did look forward to hearing this CD though, sub-titled "The Pre-Yes Years, Recordings From 1964 - 1968", and stating "featuring Mabel Greer's Toyshop and Syn and Yes". Well, you can forget about Yes - there's no recording of this band to be found on the CD, and the first real song (after two short sound samples) was recorded in 1980. But what the heck...

The songs on this compilation are, of course, old recordings, and it shows. Sound quality varies a lot, sometimes even within songs. But you know that when you're buying a CD like this.
The collector in me cries out. The songs are not in chronological order! And worst of all, I am not convinced, no attempt is made to convince me that this CD contains the complete recording sessions of Syn marks II and III and Mabel Greer's Toyshop. Pity - a missed chance here.
This, however, does not account for the two tracks by Devil's Disciples: tracks 6 and 11, which are the only studio recordings the band ever did. Sweet pop, slightly dreaming on You Better Move On and more rhythm and blues like The Who on For Your Love. Very Sixties' pop, but for 1964 / 1965 a spark of psychedelics.

Syn with Banks (and Chris Squire on bass, by the way) lived from mid 1967 to February 1968. Yep, the psychedelic years! Look at that title: 14 Hour Technicolour Dream! Post Sgt. Pepper's, but again The Who influences as well. Less sweet, fortunately. Young and naive, but nice. The attempt is made to make a hit single, resulting in a silly pop song for side A (track 19) and a B-side on which the band could do whatever they liked. Not very distinctive music for those days, with more The Who influences, but also some of The Animals.
Tracks 12 and 13 are more psychedelic. A bit of early Pink Floyd, only more pop and less original. Flowerman appears to be the title track of one of two "rock operas" Syn did. "What?! Where are those?!", the collector cries...

Mabel Greer's Toyshop also has Chris Squire on bass. The song you all know, of course, is Beyond And Before (tracks 7 and 8), which is on the first Yes LP. Electric Funeral (tracks 15 and 16) also contain elements we later hear in early Yes, especially the ending section of the Radio Fun Mix of this song. But it's all on the safe side, less experimental than on the first Yes albums. I guess Images Of You And Me is from the same radio session as the second Electric Funeral version. Nice wah-wah guitar (Hendrix!), but the song itself is too simple. OK, nice ending with two guitars.

Track 18 has Chris Squire on lead vocals. A very nice song indeed, and probably one of the reasons Yes collectors should have this CD. The roots of what was to come.
The remaining titles are Banks solo or Peter Bands Band. Musically they might fit on this compilation, but regarding the idea of it, out of place. I'm usually quite fond of CDs like this, but I think it should have looked less like a collection of randomly chosen tracks from the man's past. The material is interesting at best, but a better selection of tracks would make up a lot more for the disappointing quality.

Conclusion: 4 out of 10.

Country of Origin: USA Format: CD Record Label: Dobles Productions Inc. Catalogue #: DPI 0001 Year of Release: 1999 Time: 55:33 Info: Aghora website

There's that area somewhere the cores of prog and metal, that more and more bands are exploring. Aghora is one of those bands. A description of "progressive metal" is far from clear, or simply applies to a lot of bands, so I'll try and describe the music in other words. Having two guitarists, you can imagine this band to have a solid foundation for the songs. Heavily distorted riffs provide the first layer to most of the songs. However, they're not as heavy, not as metal as I would have expected from two guitarists. It's not very often that I hear the two guitarists separately and play different parts - almost only when soloing. And Santiago Dobles, who wrote most of the music, is good at that. He obviously is a Steve Vai fan. He can play fast, but doesn't show off his technical abilities on an irritating level. He's still paying attention to melodies and whether his playing fits the music, which, as I said before, is not too heavy.
Maybe it's the kind of music or maybe it's the musicians, but after a couple of songs, some solos sound like I've heard them do in previous songs. This also applies to the distorted riffs - they're so distorted that I hardly hear any differences between the main riffs of different songs.

Drummer Sean Reinert, who co-wrote Jivatma, is the one who makes you realize the music is in some weird time signatures at times. I didn't hear this until I paid more attention to the drumming, instead of the music on the whole. Maybe Reinert's playing has suffered from the otherwise very good mix and production: his drumming sounds like he's only got three drums and two cymbals. There's very little variety. In a song like Existence, he lets you know he can hit them hard, but then the limited drum sound becomes even more clear, which doesn't do the song any good. It's predominating the sound in this song, and thus my opinion of it.
And something that accounts for too many hard rock and metal drummers is that there is hardly any difference between quiet and heavy pieces. Drums are hit with roughly the same force. But even a drummer like Metallica's doesn't seem to have the knowledge of how to be a gentle drummer during softer passages, like good blues and jazz drummers do. Maybe it's got something to do with the musical background - when taught how to be a metal drummer, the blues origins of the music are skipped? But now I am giving an opinion on something in general; I'll return to describing Aghora's music.

It took a couple of songs before I heard the bass properly. Sean Malone's playing is very nice, and I would have liked to hear more of that in the mix. He's playing more of a supportive role to the rest of the music, and he's almost adding more melody to the more metal-based riffs.

Danishta Rivero's words are mainly written to be sung in the quieter sections. She has a clear, very un-metal voice. In the first couple of songs I didn't think her voice fitted the band's sound very much. But later on I think I got used to the combination. When hearing the album again and again, I think it's got more to do with the compositions. The lyrics lack connection with the music, like rhythm and rhyme. It's almost like she's singing without any reference to the music, like she's telling her own story. Well, it's not like that all the time, but I prefer lyrics to be part of the whole song, like they do in Frames, than live a life of their own, as in the first two songs or Mind's Reality.
Although she tries to give some mysterious feeling to the songs during some verses, her voice is too clear and sweet to do so. Aghora won't be like The Gathering or Within Temptation, although I must say there are more differences between Aghora and those bands, especially the lack of bombastic power keyboards in Aghora's sound.

The progressiveness that brings Aghora to these DPRP CD Review pages lies in the rhythmic alternations, the strangeness, the references to Vai (guitar solos), The Gathering (metal with clear, almost mystic singing; please note The Gathering are creating a darker atmosphere), and songs like Kali Yuga and Jivatma. The piano in Kali Yuga gives the music a bit of warmth other songs could have used as well, and in the heavy parts of this songs, the piano is brilliant! It gives the sound more body and variation. I would like the band to consider expanding the line-up with a keyboard player... The vocals are more mysterious than in other songs, and creates a darker atmosphere. Especially the first couple of songs remain cold; it's too technical, too thought-of. Something you see with more American bands than bands from any other country. And ha - bass more up front! Makes me think of Myung... great job! By far the best song on the album. Best music, best atmosphere, best performance as a real band, as a unit.
Jivatma is like a jam session. No unnecessary or drastic time signature changes, but an instrumental progressing slowly, with percussion, then keyboards, then bass, and only then the guitar begins to speak. Slowly. Almost jazz, this. It is a bit strange though, to hear this song on an album like this. But if the band can do this, I hope to hear more of it!

All in all, still a very nice debut album. (Well, I assume it's a debut.) I really hope the second half of the CD is representative of where the band is heading, and that the music and vocal lines will become more of a unit. And if more attention is paid to the production of the drums, and Vai and other references will become mere influences, a next album might become very popular.

Conclusion: 6 out of 10.