Trollheart

Ant, that was really cool! Any chance of a PM?
Just one point: the vocals seemed really down low in the mix --- was that just the video, or is the production really that bad?
Either way, an up would be very much appreciated!
Thx
TH

QUOTE=Anteater;591810]Glad everyone who I've PMed Dracula's Music Cabinet to is enjoying it thusfar. Odd music ain't it, hahahaha!

Now then, today's review is a bit different from the last couple. The album is recent and not particularly obscure, but I would say it's a curious piece and thus interesting enough to be worth a review. Plus, I have a few comments to make about all this contemporary "new prog" which seems to be at the forefront of most prog. scenes today...


If any of you went to ProgArchives.com right now and started looking through the "Best" lists of 2007 and 2008, you would notice that there's a particularly annoying trend beginning to rear its ugly head, a phenomena which has seemingly been getting worse since the dawn of the new millenia: more than 60% of the highest rated releases are ALL symphonic progressive rock albums by bands/artists like The Flower Kings, Karmakanic, Spock's Beard, Knight Area, Galahad, Pendragon, Glass Hammer, etc. Big "WTF" moment for me at the time, but only recently did it hit me: the prog. revival which began revving up in the mid 90's...has hit a ceiling. Accessibility has become favored over compisition, and the ELP-style pretension which you see in bands like Dream Theater and in the majority of "prog. metal" had fully sunk its insidious claws into Neo-Prog. Eeeeeek!

Now, as a fan of Yes and Genesis, I don't have anything against Symphonic Progressive Rock personally. Harmony and I get along quite well together usually, and there's plenty of that to be found in Neo/Symphonic Prog. for some thirty odd years now. The thing is though, I've gone through my fair share of all these different "Third Wave" groups' discographies, yet I'm scared at just how indistinctive these bands are from one another in terms of approach/style/thematics over the last seven years or so. Every vocalist is trying to be Jon Anderson, Peter Gabriel or Steve Wilson. The instrumentation is consistantly good for the most part, but there's nothing there I haven't heard before or its all muddled in Nu-Metal/Alternative excremental influences which we all started hearing with Porcupine Tree on Deadwing but has now seeped in to everyone else's sound (with maybe Frost* being the only exception, but they're a studio project anyway). And The Flower Kings...screw em': they're just an overly prolific, boring and lyrically simplistic grandchild of Yes. You just need one album by them and you don't need anything else from them.

So what's left at the end for those who were looking for good modern prog.? Nothing: you lose hope that you'll find anything different and move on to bigger and better things.

Yet every once in awhile, something is different. You hear a band like Moon Safari and your faith and curiosity are renewed in the entire genre. Someone has opened a window and lets new wind blow the staleness out, and now you have a reason to be excited again!

So, on the album review: Blomljud is this Swedish outfit's sophomore album, an elaboration/maturation of sorts from 2005's A Doorway to Summer, which was nice but nothing special. Back then, I simply would have written Moon Safari as The Flower Kings' forgettable second cousin and moved onto something more interesting. But three years is a long time. More than enough time, actually, for a group who wants to elevate themselves above their competition to actually reach that goal. The result of that growth is this record, and its one of the best I've heard within the Symphonic genre a lonnnnnng time.

Aside from the rather refreshing emphasis on the folk side of prog. which so many other bands seem to have thrown away, what stood out for me the most were the vocals when I first picked up the album. When multi-instrumentalists Simon Akesson and Petter Sandstrom share the mike and stage together, it felt like someone had cloned The Beach Boys and gave them richer voices to sing their hearts out with. Rarely do vocals stand out in progressive rock of any kind, but for once I can give everyone my assurances that Moon Safari is TOP-NOTCH on this front, and it was a pleasant surprise for me.

The second thing that will strike you, if you pay attention, are the simple YET intelligently arranged lyrical/musical themes (a weak point in most modern day progressive rock) that emerge often enough to give this album a measure of enjoyabe consistency. Because along with commentary on man's relationship with technology (In the Countryside), nostalgia of a simpler past (Yasgur's Farm, Constant Bloom), the music itself is warm as summer and unusually memorable to me considering all that I've heard. Tracks like the instrumental 'Moonwalk' can be almost hallucinatory when you close your eyes and lay out in a quiet place for Pate's sake! And I can't forget the stand-out 'Other Half of the Sky', which is 30 minutes of the sort of pastoral harmony that only comes around once in a thousand CDs.

So yeah, Symphonic Prog. did not die with Yes or the Canterbury bands like the purists would have you think. The spirit still lives on in bands like Moon Safari, who bring ingenuity and inventiveness but still giving us a poignant glimpse into a glorious time in music when masterpieces like Close to the Edge and In The Land of the Grey and Pink were at the forefront of the minds and hearts of listeners, lifting souls up and giving people the sort of joy that makes them want to go on living.

Maybe other groups will see the light and pick up a few pointers from this modern-day masterpiece. We have enough Porcupine Trees out there to make a forest after all, lol!!


The vid. below is Yasgur's Farm, one of the best tracks on the album. It's harder than some of the other tracks, but its definitely a highlight. If you like it, tell me and I'll PM this album to you!!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018