KONVERGENCIE

This is one of my favorites....Clearly, Marian Varga as a dominant player on this album, complemented nicely some great quitar solos from Griglak who is showing here his phenomenal potential (that he had never reached in his later projects with band called Fermata, though). Drums of Dusan Hajek are missing the strong base rhytm but are over all on better average. Fedor Freso has been always gold solid in all his performances on any album I've ever heard him on; he leaves his typical mark of melodic, yet a little dry bass playing, although here he comes to life a bit more. Obviously, Marian Varga always brought the best in his musicians and if there is anyone from that era you want to hear in top form, you will find it on any Varga's output.

Marian Varga, even after that many years, is without question one of the top keyboard players ever. I think he is to keyboards what Jeff Beck is to guitar. Absolutely recognizable, very original sound of his Hammond impresses me more and more as I age. Former keyboard player myself, I could always imitate most of the solos of any keyboard player at the time. Varga was the case where I had to humbly admit that I have much to more learn before I can say that I ama keyboard player. His work is outright phenomenal, the way he works with his instrument cannot be imitated. It almost seems that he is making love to his Hammond and at the same time he feels a need to squeeze everything possible from it and destroy it, only to recover from this schizophrenia and play some of the most beautiful, heart wrenching melodies you've ever heard. Nothing in this albums tries to copy anything. if you hear an influence of ELP, it stops right there. the themes are various in rhytms, closely intertwining with the deep classical music influence and it all hits the listener with an incredible energy. I always think about what would have happened if he had a chance to pick the great western musicians to work with him - it woud bring incredible results, no doubt. He is clearly a top notch musician with an enormous array of ideas and skills to put them to life. On this album, there are long compositions as well as just simple songs with transparent arrangements but even those blend into the structure and to me, they serve as a break from the barrage of mental bombs hitting your brain, just to make you ready for another unexpected journey. No other band that came out of Eastern Europe was this excellent except perhaps SBB (Poland) and was as compatible with western as well as Slavic influences as this line up on this album. This is a must own for any fan who searches for new horizons and sounds colored strongly with all musical styles available at the time and beyond. Marian Varga was ahead of his times even for western standards. Five stars