Возвратись под Солнце / RETURN UNDER THE SUN

Twenty years after their formation 7 Ocean appear to be back on track, composing music in a prolific way.At this point the trio focused on writing as much music as they could, their site provides free downloads of albums recorded by the band, apparently searching for a promoter.So, their debut was followed in 2009 by ''Return under the sun'', an album with a more normal line-up, Eletsky focused on his work on keyboards and Starosotsky played only some sparse bass, focusing on his vocal duties, as guitarist Oleg Grinevich and bassist Vladimir Stoljarov were recruited for these recordings.

No wonder, ''Return under the sun'' has a more natural sound than the band's debut and, as a result, it sounds a tad more convincing and professional of a recording.Of course the material is not up there with the first league acts of keyboard Prog, but it appears to be well-executed with interesting parts and variations, delivered in a set of long suites and mid-length pieces.Additionally it sounds more symphonic and less electronic than the previous release, thus it competes as a focused work within the Symphonic Rock frames.The multi-layered synth parts, which sounded as fillers in ''The mysterious race of strange entities'', are limited to zero and the band performs a light Symphonic Rock with emphasis on keyboards and piano, containing organ waves and a more balanced use of synthesizers, offering some nice violin, flute, electric piano and harsichord notes in the process and sinking deep into the Classical education with all these piano variations and interludes.While the electric guitar is rather sporadic, there is some good presence of the acoustic one on several tracks for a more diverse and rich sound.The overall result is not always memorable, but comes up as a nice improvement, the guys set their direction into the soft Symphonic Rock vein and they did a good job at the end of the day.

Less E.L.P.-sounding and more original than their debut, moving also a bit away from the LITTLE TRAGEDIES references.This would demand a sacrifice by the band, which now sounds less bombastic/grandiose.The album comes as a free download, for fans of keyboard Prog and Symphonic Rock this could be a very good listening.