KINGSTON WALL II

This I believe is the most appreciated of the three studio albums by this band. "We Cannot Move" opens the record with marching rhythms and oriental chants, the composition having good melodies and verses. This tune sums up quite well their musical style in my opinion: Hard rock with Arabic oriented melodies. "Istwan" has euphoric melody flow, and I believe this track is also presented as an audio stream sample on this site. A good constructed composition, like many other of the bands songs, so though this is clearly psychedelic music, improvisation was more present on their concerts than on their studio recordings. This track leads directly to "Could It Be So?", being a dreamy hazy song with fine solos and melodic. Interesting sound layers make room for "And It's All Happening", a slow and melancholic instrumental tune, holding a wonderful guitar solo in it. This tune turns nicely as "Love Tonight", first driven by bongos and acoustic guitar, which turn to crunchy fuzz guitar. Again a good, thoughtful composition served rarely from a psychedelic dish. These four songs make a wonderful one piece of music, only it's sad that the entity fades out with a bit less imaginative manner. "Two of A Kind" starts with acoustic guitars, which introduce a peculiar rhythm driving this song, having also long passages for guitar solos. This also fades behind some programmed loops and Petri's whisperings, not a very pleasant solution to my ears. "I Feel Love" is then a quite primitive song, relying on a straight basic beat. "Shine On Me" has a fine guitar intro sounding very much like Jimi Hendrix, and there's also a tasty sax from a guest musician, who'll contribute also on their following album. The tune is quite simple, and there's lots of space for instrumental solos. Following "You" is the longest of all tracks reaching ten minutes, and it begins with some Spanish sounding notes from an acoustic guitar and bongos. Soon electric guitar jumps on another key, and the composition progresses to a slow blues after some tasty maneuvers. Some very fine acoustic licks are to be heard here, also the jamming evolves to a very pleasant jazzy chaos. "Palékastro" concludes the album with a firm and tight grasp, being a fast instrumental rocker with interesting rhythm arrangements, and a very uninteresting fade out.

I had a chance to hear the 1998 re-mastered CD version of this album, and it has a mini bonus CD with three bonus tracks. The first two tracks are from a single "We Cannot Move". "Between The Trees" is a quite basic hard rock track without many psychedelic or progressive elements, still being a catchy tune. "She's So Fine" is another Hendrix cover, actually being Noel Redding's composition. Nothing special in my opinion, but good 1960's oriented pop rock song however. Over eleven minutes long "Can't Get Thru'" is a live recording done same year as the album was released. The sound quality isn't very good, but the performance is great, being a very fast wahwah-pedal dominated song with lots of room for jamming. I believe that the song is actually a medley, as later the song has sequences that I'm sure I have heard on other albums of this band. Also sadly another extremely irritating fadeout ends this concert recording. Unless you are a very diehard fan of this band, I wouldn't spend much money on upgrading from an older original CD pressing to this version.

I would also like to mention that bassist Jukka Jylli really shines on this record; There are lots of small spaces left for him to fill in the compositions, and he really uses these opportunities in a fine manner. This is a very good record, but still it hasn't grown as an exceptional album in my own listening catalogues. There are anyway very great moments on it, so give this a listen if you can.