SKYMIND

This album is one of the most unique albums I've ever heard. It's hard to place a finger on any one prog band that they sounds most like, but if you add up a few together you can sort of get the idea. They are something like a mixture of Larks' Tongues King Crimson + Frank Zappa + Magma +a touch of metal + French music, and a bit of middle eastern influence. The amazing thing about the strange new sound they present is that it is so accesible, but not in the least bit representive of anything poppy or catchy as their music is very complex almost at the level of that of a RIO band. It really only takes a couple spins to really get into them quite a bit.

Song by song...

Skymind- One of the heavier songs on the album. This one doesn't exactly feature singing as the singer is more of a talking/chanting level here, but the intense distorted guitar and the feel is awesome and somewhat like a King Crimson instrumental such as Red or Fracture.

Yellow Garden- This song is definentely different. I'm not exactly sure what the sound is exactly, but reminds me of a gypsy folk song or something of that sort. Theres a low voice that comes after the singer that makes up a Magma like... chorus, but not so much one. This is one of the catchier songs on the album.

Blind Child- Wonderful intro that leads into a beautiful vocal performance by a women to a sweet acoustic guitar that sounds like that guitar that comes into your head when you think of Venice, Italy. After which comes my favorite part of the album featuring when of the dramatic piano/violin parts I've heard with the girl humming along to it.

The Purple Queen's Lips- Hard to describe this song. It's not my favorite off of my album nothing really extremely special about it. It starts off loud and slows down a bit for the vocal part after some singing the violin and distorted guitar pick in, and the violin playing is sweet. They eventually slow down and build up the vocals as "The Purple Queen's Lips" is repeated over and over to lead to more of the guitar/violin.

The Egg Shaped Moon- This song is mostly great due to the long instrumental part towards the middle. It's starts off with a nice guitar riff, goes into vocal, then we've got a heavy instrumental period that goes on there for a while.

Stratus- Starts off with a bunch of weird noises that work well to build up like some introductions you might hear in other prog songs then goes into one of the most metal-like parts of the album featuring a quick bass and guitar and some nice soloing. After that all ends it turns into an Arabic piece which after a few minutes it gets to the singing and feature more dominant violin, the vocals are a bit strange, but fit well after you are used to them. It gets louder again and the violin takes over and the arabic sound comes back as it finally comes to an end.

This is my favorite modern prog album, and I hope you can like it too!

5/5