Atlas and the cockroaches

Among the small wonders of the so-called musical life of our time, the encouraging fact that the developed in the 70s, then by fawning-over adjusted and inartistic music journalists heard hasty for mausetot declared progressive rock or art rock now not only, as in the nineties and noughties years , is laboriously kept alive, but seriously developed and revitalized. We owe this nice surprise the likes of the zappaesque Flower Kings of Sweden or Steven Wilson or just this British band. Hooks come from the Hard Rock, and so alien me the appropriate reef passages also anwehten on first hearing, so clearly I meant soon to hear that they are much more original and less cool and technologically deterministic as appropriate sprinklings about Muse. The musical highlight in this respect is the twelve-minute "Falling back to Earth," in which decomposes a Hochgeschwindigkeitsriff, reassembled and is varied, with rhythm changes that are adventurous, but never extravagant, what then, as if by magic, in a very melodic chorus is transferred before Part II produces an almost bloodcurdling sighing motif. Sheer admiration inspire me with the fervor and taste a security, with the hook medieval madrigals ("The Path") or renaissance-like melodies present. Stunningly fresh and at the same time reminiscent of Gentle Giant is the polyphonic farewell to the cockroach as such ("Cockroach King" - since Keith Reid, the home poet of Procol Harum, you have such an anti-cliché-lyrics barely able to hear more), while otherwise process the text honestly the myth of the Titan Atlas son who has to lift "all the heavens and the depths below." Ross Jennings has an incredibly variable voice, and all polyphonic vocal arrangements are such that one always found on repeated listening new subtleties. In "King Cockroach" is allowed the band a short excursion into jazz with traditional Hungarian, and also manages the so effortlessly that you have these six guys capable of anything for the future. Especially as have the occasional detour into Sphärenklänge hand and foot, are never mere sound clouds. Beyond all discussions, only intended for listening and enjoying, the hymns "Because it's there" are (taking the theme of "The Path" only a cappella and then modern instrumented again) and "Somebody" (here conjures up the guitarist Griffiths arpeggios on the fingerboard of the guitar, as Steve Hackett could not make nice, and at the end there is a fat horn section), both of similar emotional force as Steven Wilson "Deform to Form a Star" - on because one must completely leave his goosebumps.