ECHOES FROM WITHIN DRAGON ISLAND

That causes no surprise that Antony Kalugin makes good symphonic rock albums. This is known. But it is always a matter of surprise how good each of the new ones is. After the "Messages from Afar" dilogy I was quite intrigued about the new Karfagen album. I wondered if Antony manages to make "Tales from within Dragon Island" on his high level of prog rock music creation. And by now I'm really happy that Karfagen tenth album is even better than I expected. It is true that it reveals rather a combination of Karfagen and Sunchild music than the pure Karfagenic sound. However, it collects all the advantages of the two projects sound leaving all the redundant behind.

The key part of the album is the "Dragon Island Suite". Part 1 and 2 is the monolithic structure that shows the best of symphonic rock epics. It can remind you about the "Thick as a brick" or "Tales from topographic oceans" by the similar structure, composition and concept. A lot of musical themes develops during the "Suite" and forms number variations that finish with the classical for the prog-rock epics reprise. Antony is very inventable about the composition, references and reprises, so all the 35 minutes of "Suite" are very intriguing.

The third part of the "Suite" contains even more unpredictable variations that are quite worthwhile to listen, although parts 1 and 2 are much more cohesive than the rest of the album. They divided from the part 3 by the short lyrical track "My Bed is a Boat" that is a great interlude and sounds like a simple melodic song.

Besides the accordion motives that remind about the "Magician's Theater" movements, an album turns back to the "Gnomon" sound. Organ and keyboard solo, interesting rhythmic syncops and similar vocal movements bring us back to this album from 2007. In my oppinion, potencial of the "Gnomon" sound manner wasn't exhausted by "Gnomon" or even by "Tales from within Dragon Island", so I like the idea to develop these sounds and concepts. A variety of transissions between the different themes in the new album (especially comapring with the previous one) also worths mentioning. By the way, it was interesting to find a few motives from the early Karfagen and Sunchild CD's.

The feature that brings the atmosphere to this symphony of sound is the lyrics, written by Robert Louis Stevenson. They are very inspiring and melodious and perfectly fit the mood of the album. The spirit of Romanticism that reflected in the Stevenson's poems fills also the music of the album and corresponds well to the Antony's style.

While there are still space for some compositional improvements and developments, "Tales from within Dragon Island" is the awesome example of monolithic album that deserves to be an unavoidable addition to any good progressive rock collection. It is really coherent and cohesive text that is interesting to explore. Besides, Antony is true to his habit of the optimistic and bright music creation. This makes his album an important exclusion from other novelties of 2019.

Limited edition of the album includes also CD2. Five previously unissued tracks recorded in different years are placed there. "Flying Brooks" and "Winter Rooks" catches the mood of this album very well and fits the sound of "Suite". At the same time, they are much closer to the traditional Karfagen music than the content from CD1. "Incantation"'s have a lot in common with some movements from the "Messages from Afar" and even from the "Seven" and probably were recorded during 2015?2018 period. This songs are not the essential part of the album, yet they are very interesting and quite worth listening, especially if you like Karfagen. I would like to notice the studio live version of "Alight Again", that touched me even more than the original one. "Across the Dark We Steer" also shouldn't be forgotten. This is very atmospheric song with the special mood that can be unnoticed because of his place on CD2. Missing it would be a mistake.

What's left here is to sum up that this album is one of the 2019 highlights and deserves to be marked as the wonderful fragment of the great progressive rock map.