JEREMIAS - FORESHADOW OF FORGOTTEN REALMS

This Austrian arrangement, Circle Of Illusion's only production, 'Jeremias- Foreshadow Of Forgotten Realms' is a fantastical relief of musical wizardry. Something different, bold, embellishing more layers of technical genre than you can wave a stick at. Presented was an enthralling collaboration designed to illustrate the "ambivalence of human emotion". It's conceptually busy collaboration is made clear by a talented young composer Gerald Peter to create this "unique opus". Musically it genuinely does work well, it just had to, it was an album years in the making constructed on Peter's "love for small detail". The listener is almost immediately immersed into a 79.57 minute long, 11 track, theatre like atmosphere attuned to 'Phantom Of The Opera' alit with a complex of sound imaging. The album also felt 'exiting' to listen to, comparatively listening to Øresund Space Collective or the honoured existence of Jørn Lande-Ayreon-Avantasia Soundscaping is massively wide, peppered with colourful detail, so the album listens like a score of an action-adventure movie. At times, signature images of contemporary funk throb thru accompanied with wa-wa-whammy-bar. Brown's hand picked vocals dominate the scenery emphasising this is an epic story serious with intent when the character is presented, yet flaunting images of secondary character vocals make it a temperate and flexible album feeling like a warm personal theatre connection. Contemporary backing vocals by Cole and Shafran have an innocent approach, for one, an Anneke Van Giersbergen (ex-Gathering) vocality, secondly complimenting the frequent funk appearances in between the musical 'scenes'. Frolicking in the background are combinations of 'YES' keyboard signatures right up to a dose of Progressive Jazz piano that keys out a conservative appearance. Even the appearance of a stylised Disney- Prince+Princess like album cover strongly hints to its very contents' nature. There seems little convincing that Peter's production was intentionally written on the premise of it being predominantly a 'progressive' composition. It feels rather more like a composition encompassing many formats and sound signatures. This is an honest album bravely rounding many popular yet well composed sounds into one engrossing experience. The experience could only be enhanced further by ones' privilege of seeing the production live. Really epic emotion served with a large helping of satisfaction come of this listen. Truly unique. It has to be a fantastic feeling when an ensemble can get emerge together and create this kind of high calibre, 'quality' music. This crew of 8 can look back with accomplishment at the creation of a pinnacle land marker.