Request for reviews - VP [my biography]

My page: http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=10003

bandcamp.com: http://vp-1974.bandcamp.com/music

Review:

I have been making music since I was 14 years old.  During the 1990s, I made several attempts to organize a group, but was unable to, so by 2003, I started to write music on my own.

SOUND DEPENDENCE

My first album, “Sound Dependence,” was written with only a six-string acoustic guitar, microphone and a drum sampler.  It was so bad that I had to use noise in order to hide the effects of so many compressors, hence the name.  The album includes songs which I wrote during the 1990s.  Unfortunately, due to the fact that I didn’t have access to the best equipment, it was, in my opinion, not my strongest work.  The ideas were quite good, but I wasn’t able to give them as full of a body as I would have liked to.  In my opinion, “The Story of Arabian Wise Man” turned out to be one of my best works.  I always like pointing people to this track.  “Sound Dependence” is the only album I have made which has a psychedelic style, as I have been playing prog/fusion ever since.

THERE IS AN END TO EVERYTHING

This is the second album I made.  I played guitar and bass, but started using different instruments and learning how to program with Cakewalk.  As this was my first experience combining these tools, the material isn’t perfect, but the musical material is quite interesting.  For example, there is a large-scale composition, "Observer In The Shadow,” which happens to be my wife’s favorite song.  The song is about a man who sits under a tree, quietly watching everything around him (think “Fool On The Hill,” for example).  He watches children, birds, the vanities of mankind; he misses nothing.  Those who are familiar with this album believe that the track, "Observer In The Shadow,” is the centerpiece of the album, but I meant to write the album as a whole composition, and my personal favorite is the track "There Is An End To Everything.” It is, for me, the best part of the entire album. This is the first composition which I was able to express my soul. The flute is a lament for the fact that all life on Earth eventually dies. The guitar picks up at the shimmering, almost dead sound of bells. The guitar sings to the flute that life is not to be lived in vain. I drew the face of a troubled woman whose head grows on top of a dying tree.  Her face shows the mood of the album.

AT SUNSET OF DAY'S

This is my third album.  As a teenager during the 70s, I was fond of jazz rock.  I decided to dedicate this album to this period in the development of my musical tastes.  The album is straightforward, and does not carry any particularly hidden information.  I wrote nine individual tracks in the style of jazz rock, and it was this album, before the release of “Water World,” which stood out most to my fans.  It is a dynamic album full of positive energy.  Some of my favorite tracks here include “A Ridges,” “The Lonely Cliff, “The Shepherds of Wind” & “Caravan.” I drew a boy on the dock happily playing with his feet on the water at sunset on the album cover 

LILAC GARDEN

This is the fourth album.  The album began a new musical stage for me.  I was under the influence of bands like Yes (during their “Close To The Edge” period) and similar artists.  I wanted to make an attempt at trying my hand using this style.  I came up with characters for a story I titled “A Kingdom Called Lilac Garden.”  The main characters were Princess Lily and Prince Iris.  It feels to me that this was the most beautiful and solid piece I ever composed.  The story ends in tragedy, with Princess Lily being kidnapped from the Lilac Garden, which was the source of her life.  Being dried up after leaving the pond, all the characters died.

THE LUNAR STONE

“The Lunar Stone” is my fifth album.  After Lilac Garden, I wanted to take a break from long compositions and just wanted to write a few separate songs.  I composed three miniature pieces: “Wet From Rain (Evening I, II, & III).”  The work is a small story of a loving couple who spend time on the street under an umbrella in the rain. They were wet and they had nowhere to go, but that meant nothing to them.  They loved each other and it helped them to spend an evening in the rain.  The song, "Evening Train,” describes a trip on the train. It does not have main characters per se.  I simply used the music to describe the action on the train. "Double Vision" is an interesting song to me because it describes the opinion of one person but from two different perspectives. One perspective is described by a guitar, the other by a hammond keyboard.  The central composition, "The Lunar Stone,” is the story which takes place during wintertime.  A bear woken up by a racket.  I drew a bear in the moonlight on the cover.  He is confused and doesn't know how he can live during the winter.  He is covered with frost and looks like a frozen stone in the moonlight.

After the album was finished, I began to actively promote the music on the Internet.  Before this, my music was only available locally.  I was pleasantly surprised with I started to read good feedback regarding my music, and people began writing to me, heaping praise, saying that I wrote in a style not reminiscent of anyone they could reference.  It was, of course, very nice and humbling to hear this.  We have to fast-forward five years later, as on one hand, I was finally receiving critical success, but on the other, I was unable to play for a while.  I fell and broke my wrist in three places while I was walking my dog, and for three years, I was unable to move my fingers at all.  It was a very difficult five years to endure, but God wills things for us.  I used that time to think over mistakes I made in compositions, and I strove to rid myself of flaws and defects I saw in my music.  When I was ready to play again, I had prepared sketches for what would become the album, “Water World.”

WATER WORLD

This is my latest album.  “Water World” is the most mature work in my career.  With this album, my profile on the Internet grew 1000%.  Before this particular album, I had the attention of hard-core prog-rock music lovers, but when I made “Water World” available, it was something like a bomb blast in terms of exposure!  I received a lot of letters of support and it got me to your website.  I received such amazing letters from artists like Angel Ontalva (October Equus), Steven Roberts (Ut Gret) and Amy Denio.  Thanks to the illustrations on this album, musicians started asking me to do cover art. As it turns out, this is my job. I’m preparing a cover for the new Ut Gret albums, and have completed the design of the booklet.

This album is one big story about two very different civilizations.  A ship was lost and docked onto an island where two different races lived.  These were called the Crocodiles and Lyubdi (Krokuts & Hunty), and they fought a lot.  The fighting between these two was interfered with by a third race of people who came from a more “civilized” world. The local folks did not like the interlopers, and in order to protect their culture, the two enemies united against the foreigners.  They don’t like people whose motivation was simple greed, greed, greed, and this was the impression the third group left on the Krokuts & Hunty. Antakena, tribal leader of the Hunty, used a magic potion to drug the invaders, and they woke up on their ship, having no recollection about anything that happened on the island, as their memory was erased.

At first, I planned on doing the story in two parts.  The first version was released as 7 tracks, but after two months, I decided to switch my equipment for something more professional and began making recordings of much higher quality.  I decided that if I wrote a second part with different equipment, the effect would be ruined, so I decided not to do a sequel.  I ended up adding a track called “4 Night Revelation Of Antackena,” and completed work on the concept.

It has been 5 years.  I spent this time learning how to work with sound, installing a more professional program, and building a professional studio.  Now, I will be able to mix under better conditions.  I decided not to write any more music until I felt I could achieve a good, professional sound. Now, the time has come!  I’ve begun work on a new album called "All In Grey.”  I released a single called "The Shadow” http://soundcloud.com/user-32874342/the-shadow , and I want to show you that my work is better than before!