Yep, that'll do it!

In case you didn’t expect this, though I’m back now I have a huge amount of work to do and so while I will be updating this and other music journals as regularly as I can, I will be concentrating a little more on my non-music ones. To that effect, then, The Great Discography Project is now cancelled. I don’t have the time to spend on it, and to be perfectly frank it was turning out to be too big a project anyway.

So here I will be doing other stuff. Not too much in the way of simple album reviews, though they will be here on and off, but mostly articles and specials and series and other stuff I find interesting. Perhaps more of the writing about the nuts-and-bolts of music a la More Than Words, Two Sides of the Same Coin etc than just talking randomly about albums. I will be closing my Metal and Prog journals though, as I won’t have the time to work on them, and anyway, if I have a metal journal what’s the point of Metal Month?

Don’t expect the kind of regular multi-updates I used to do here. It won’t happen. I’ll write stuff for this and and when I can, and when I want to, but there’ll be no set period of regularity for that. Sometimes something may just occur to me; I may think about it for a while, or I may want to get it down before I forget about it, or lose interest in it, and while I have the time to devote to it.

This is one such of the latter, an idea that only came to me yesterday morning. Perhaps very slightly looking back to my old Random Track of the Day idea, though not really, so I’m not sure why I said that. Anyway...

I download a TON of albums, and often I’ve built up such a download queue that I have to wait until I have time to get all the albums onto my PC. This can literally mean that months can go by before I get albums I bought, with the result that, a lot of the time, I don’t get to listen to them or even remember them till they come up on a playlist and then I’m left thinking to myself

http://www.rhythmandboozebar.com/wp-...ay-dec2018.jpg
I don’t remember downloading that! I tend to listen to a lot of my shuffled playlists while doing other things - making dinner, doing dishes, boring stuff - and often try to identify songs from the first few seconds or minute of play. Which is where these kind of tunes play havoc with me. Unable to recognise or guess what the song is, I realise that it’s one of those
https://beeimg.com/images/a49668496352.jpg
So in this section I’ll be listening to and droning on about tracks like this; songs from albums, or even artists, I didn’t even realise I had. Why did I download the album in the first place? Is the song I’m hearing an indication that I made a good or a bad choice? And most importantly, who the hell gives a fuck? But since when has that stopped me?

Okay then, today I heard this, and as it began I was thinking I knew the singer. First it sounded like that guy from The Minstrel’s Ghost (who? Fuck off!) and then I thought maybe it could be Joey Tempest from Europe. But when I actually checked the “now playing” screen I saw this:
https://beeimg.com/images/h16329009512.jpg
So that was a surprise to me. Who are this band? Not a clue. Why did I get their album, and is the only one or have I downloaded more, perhaps a full discography, and just forgotten all about it? Let’s see what I can find out about them first.

Ah, the mist begins to clear. Kotipelto (huh?) are a side project of Stratovarius frontman Timo Kotipelto, so we know now what the name means, what kind of music they play and why I downloaded the damn thing in the first place. Not bad information gathering from one Wiki search.

Whether downloaded as part of a Stratovarius torrent, or because something like “If you liked Stratovarius you may like this” suggestion, I obviously went ahead and got the album. Our man Timo has assembled some stellar talent from the world of (mostly) power metal here, with members of Symphony X, Sonata Arctica, Helloween and even Children of Bodom playing on one or more of his three albums, all released between 2002 and 2007. A single from the first one, this one, went top ten in Finland, though I’d be willing to bet it did nothing outside of the cold borders of Scandinavia.

Title: “Beauty Has Come”
Artist: Kotipelto
Taken from: Waiting For the Dawn
Year: 2002
Genre: Power Metal
Why did I download this: Seemingly because it’s a spinoff from Stratovarius
Comments: Guess it’s a ballad, with a sharpish acoustic guitar opening, soft vocal and as I mentioned a certain medieval sound to it, almost proggy in its way. Still reminds me of Tempest, our man Timo. Scandinavian rivalry huh? Well it’s a decent song, and has the obligatory key change in the last chorus but it’s just all right really. Nice piano work.
Having heard it, do I now regret downloading it: Not really, though I’m not exactly stoked either.
Possibility of maybe giving the album a listen: I’d say somewhere in the region of 70%. I like Stratovarius, and this sounds okay. I wouldn’t be rushing to find it in the labyrinthine recesses of my music collection though, but maybe at some point.
Overall reaction: Meh, not bad.