Composer, singer, drummer and midi player, that is the description John Crispino’s name has on the album II, the second release of his personal project Seconds before Landing. On the album he gets the assistance of Steve Schuffert on guitars, JD Garrison on bass, Jamie Peck on piano, saxophone and flute, and Maurice Witkowski on acoustic guitar. [acfw id=2]

With a line up like that, there is a hint that this could be a jazz rock influenced release, which was also the indication the first track Big Train gives. However, besides the opening track, the only one that confirmed my expectations was Silent Bird, while the rest of the album has a more electronic and midi ring to it. That is not necessarily bad, but also not entirely my cup of tea – I prefer interplay between instruments over midi sounds.

However, there is still a lot to be found on this album for people who have a different taste than mine, and quite a few of those exist. The track Hey Dad for example is clearly influenced by Pink Floyd, think of tracks like Hey You or One of My Turns. Interesting detail in this respect is that the engineer who joined Pink Floyd at the release of The Wall, Andy Jackson, also took care of production for this album.

Two other highlights are The Great Deceiver and My Perfect Girl. The former is a rocky track, with a pulsing bass and a frantic guitar, with vocals that contain a slight hint of Alice Cooper in the vocals. The latter is darker and more industrial, reminding me of Transport Aerian.

Other tracks are more electronic, even ambient, and as said, not really my thing. This type of music has the habit of becoming slightly repetitive and makes me get distracted from it. However, this style does have its fans, so with a ‘try before you buy’ stamp on it, I’m sure this will still reach many satisfied listeners.

Sometimes, it’s hard to get into an album – as a listener, or as a reviewer. And in other cases, it just happens naturally. The latter is the case with Murky Red‘s new album No Pocus without Hocus, and album that I could listen to since 4 weeks before the official release. [acfw id=2]

Album cover – click for hi-res image

With this album, it is clear that Murky Red have grown since their debut – or maybe they just stopped being shy and are no longer holding back on what they have been wanting to play all the time. Of course, they still mix rock and blues, more elements have been added now. Heavy guitar riffs, mixed with melodic guitar solos, a well educated organ, and some nicely mixed in percussion are used to build rock walls, which are interleaved with psychedelic sound trips (no, not soundscapes), surrounding the hypnotising voice of Stef Flaming.

All of that is immediately part  of the opening track Pixelated Friends, a slow, dragging piece that only speeds up briefly in the end. The topic of the track is clear from the single line “I smoked all my hashtags with some pixelated friends“, which is also a good indication of the looseness and humour the band puts in their lyrics.

This is no different in Stoned And Horny, which talks of similar experiences, but musically is almost a tribute to The Doors, Gong and maybe even some Deep Purple. After a rather rocking, shining opening (the horny part), it moves to the slow, spacey stoned part before exploding again – as if the Unknown Soldier was mixed with The End, after adding bits of Mule. Served in a tea cup… and followed by the indeed hypnotising, Sweet Dark Hypnosis.

It’s not all humour though, Murky Red does have a serious side, which shows in the care taken to compose their music, but also in the lyrics of She’s Crying Diamonds and Collateral Damage.

The first talks of a woman who seems to have lost a life of luxury, ending in the gutter, where ‘the people in the street no longer care‘. This is accompanied by a piano, dark guitar riffs and percussion that was described by a listener on my ISCK Rock Radio show as if ‘cannibals are playing the drums while making dinner’. With an instrumental midsection that features alternating guitar and keyboard leads around that same rhythm pattern, this is best described as a sad song transformed to psychedelic rock.

The second of these two, Collateral Damage, is an 6.5 minute musical description of the madness of war. Starting out rather melodically, with some guitar parts played by guest musician and producer Colin Tench, it builds up a darker and gloomier mood, with varying guitar parts, war sounds in the background, and a short eight line verse that was written already in in 1993, and that perfectly summarises the madness this is track about:

“Hear the soldiers sing
Songs of hope
And songs of suffering
Hear the children cry
See the widow’s tears
Fill her near-dead eyes
This is the pain of a nation
In times of war”

The rockier, more straight forward side of Murky Red shows on tracks like  Nothing Can Go Wrong, the story of Delilah, which is centered around a heavy, fuzzed guitar mixed with an organ. The instrumental part contains a funny, jumpy bass line that made me skip back a few times. This continues into A Wooden Groove, which is 70s space rock transferred to the 21st century. The lyrics of this one are written by one who smoked too many pine needles, first singing of a tree, then explaining that the remainder of the song (a good 3 minutes) are indeed instrumental.

The last third of the album consists of four quite different tracks, starting with  Bad Wolf of the Pack, which opens with a slow Gilmouresque guitar – returning to the old Murky Red adagium that they mix Pink Floyd and blues. Slow vocals, a clean guitar and simple but very fitting percussion (bongos) do the trick here. Not a complicated song at first listen, but I bet every cover band would get it wrong.

Wild Flower has vocals that are carried by keys, drums and bass –  and almost no guitar – while the instrumentals feature once again some Flodyian guitar sounds. Over time the track moves away from that sound, without loosing coherence and power. This track was the first single from the album, about 6 months ago, and made a promise that came true now.

Then with Mermaids, the band takes us to the movies, with a piano opening that seems to announce the exciting opening scene of a motion picture that has no Disney label on it. The structure of this song is build around guitar riffs, with the keys playing counter melodies and the bass seems to sing its own melody underneath. I wrote in my review notes that this is music a group of hippies could play on the beach – provided there was power available to plug in their amps.  There is no beach in the town of Helecine, where the band comes from, but there is a corn field, so I guess this was recorded there instead.

To close off the album, Elena is nothing short of an ode to Focus, with a guitar and organ driven beginning and end, soldered together by a slow, instrumental mid section where an acoustic guitar plays a melody resembling vaguely Für Elise, before the organ joins in to build a psychedelic sound trip. A sound trip to the ancient city of Troy, that burns for Elena’s love. A fitting end to a nice musical journey.

This album is a worthy successor to 2012’s Time Doesn’t Matter, and it shows a more out-of-the-trodden-path Murky Red. Brilliant guitar work, great organ and bass work, non standard drumming and percussion and a nice mix of humorous and serious lyrics make for a nice musical journey. The production by Colin Tench is on par with that of his own band’s Corvus Stone Unscrewed, to complete the picture. No lack of dynamics here (overall Dynamic Range of 12). To top it off, the beautiful, fitting art work by Stef Flaming himself makes the main character Maurice LeMurk into the new band mascotte.

This is not a new master piece, and it wasn’t intended to be. Like any human product, it has its flaws, and most of these I expect to be subjective to the listener. I enjoyed it, the past few weeks and will enjoy it more I’m sure.  A big step forward for the band, and a big step away from the more straight forward rock on their debut album. Highly recommended.

Some music takes time to grow, both when being written or performed as when being consumed. With Kinetic Element, that was clear already with their debut album, which took the best part of three years to write and release (2009). Their second album, Travelog, was released in June of this year, taking another 6 years out of the band members lives to complete. [acfw id=2]

Style-wise rooted in the early 1970s rock of Yes, Genesis and perhaps a bit of Jethro Tull, with forty years of musical evolution thrown on top, as well as some folk and jazz, Travelog is a 70 minute listening experience. A attentive listening experience as well – with the shortest of the five tracks being running for just under 10 minutes and the music taking many turns. This is obvious immediately in the 20 minute opening track War Song, which starts as a symphonic rock piece, but then switches to something between rock and Scottish folk (bagpipe synths) when the war starts.

The vocals of Demetrius LaFavors (who also sings on Travelog and Vision) fit the story of the song very well, taking it from rock to a folk like ballad and back. A nice detail is that the main guitar riff that comes back a few times, gets copied by the bass near the end.  The bass plays a lead role on this album anyway – and in War Song there’s even room for a bass solo.

All tracks on the album have their own signature, which is not unusual, but in this case it shows the diversity of what Kinetic Element is capable of. Where War Song mixes rock and bag pipes, Travelog is more folky and sometimes pastoral in style, with beautiful classical guitar in both the intro and outro (accompanied by flute there) – with one again Demetrius, one of three guest vocalists, on vocals.

Vocals are taken over by Michelle Schrotz on Into the Lair. A track with a jazzy folk feel in the beginning (bass, gypsy guitar and beautiful vocals), but building up to a full rock piece before going back to where it came from. The keys – piano, keyboard, and organ – are in control of the instrumental part. The keys are also very present in Her, sung by Mike Florio, which has a jazzy feel due to mainly the drums, and develops into a ballad with frantic keyboards underneath. That jazzy feeling is also present in Vision of a New Dawn, which is an 18 minute jazz rock journey – for me the best track of the album.

As mentioned the vocalists are all guests, although Mike Visaggio (keys) and Michael Murray (drums) also perform some backing vocals. Instrumentally, each band member gets his own place in the music, as said there was even room for a bass solo on War Song. Mike Vissagio in his playing makes no secret of his love for the 70s keyboard heroes, and Michael Murray is not afraid to put in some jazz drumming instead of straight forward rock, which works out really well here. The bass (Mark Tupko) is ever present, and adds it’s own melody, as it should. Todd Russell on guitar then adds tunes and leads with great feel, for example in the solo on Her.

The art work is plain and simple, nothing fancy – no lyric sheet is included. The band clearly choose to let the music speak, and in that they succeeded. This album with its long tracks may not be everybody’s cup of tea, with modern attention spans reducing rather than growing, but it’s a more than decent piece of music. Highly recommended!

On dark days, I may have gloomy thoughts  – which I later mostly regret. Never were they as dark and gloomy though as the experiences that led Amadeus Awad to compose, record and release Death is Just a Feeling. Inspired, if that is the right word here, by the loss of loved ones, and a failed suicide attempt, this album is a new addition to the list of cinematic concept albums. Albums that require one to sit down and listen, and to feel. Think of well known titles like Pink Floyd’s  The Wall, or The Human Equation by Ayreon, where that applies as well. [acfw id=2]

Each track on this album fills a piece of a puzzle, that, once complete leads to the realisation, waking up after a failed suicide attempt, that

“…what I killed last night wasn’t my flesh, but my connection to the surreal skies I roamed in since the creation of the universe. I was already dead when you touched my face, death is just a feeling.”

The album consists of 6 tracks only, and it lasts just over 45 minutes, but it appears longer when listening. The story is carried by voices as well as music. Narratives by Dan Harper, with a low, hypnotic voice, are interleaved with angelic, and sometimes anxious vocals by Anneke van Gierbergen,the dramatic voice of Elia Monsef and the careful, almost shy sounds of Arjan Lucassen on the closing track. These voices are surrounded by music that is an eclectic mix of metal and heavy symphonic rock that is carrying the different moods of despair, grief and wonder. The acoustic opening track, with Anneke singing as an angel is one end of the musical spectrum, while the central piece of the album, Lonesome Clown takes us through metal, heavy rock and wailing keyboard music. This track is a 12 minute musical masterpiece, that would easily have fit on any Ayreon album. Actually, the presence of both Arjan ‘Ayreon’ Lucassen and Anneke van Giersbergen makes one wonder sometimes if this is an Ayreon album, but the music still different from what Arjan Lucassen has done.

Highlights of the album for me, besides Lonesome Clown, are the emotion filled guitar solos on Tomorrow Lies (which also include a great use of cello) and Temporary, and the way Monday Morning musically expresses the feeling of remembering a final goodbye. A final goodbye from a love one, who gets killed in an explosion shortly after.

The sound and production of the album are very full, because of the continuous presence of synths and keyboards in the back. That makes it somewhat loud, but never in a disturbing way – and even the clarinet on Temporary is able to come out front and center.

Despite it’s dark nature, this is amongst the best albums released this year (I skipped over a few planned reviews to write this one today). Highly recommended, certainly for those who like musical adventures akin to what the people involved in making this album normally deliver. It’s a work of art,  and I could easily see someone making a short, very dark movie to this album, to complete the package.