ENDLESS WAY FROM YOU

Initially I thought to have found a Camel inspired band. The very good 15 minutes opener full of flute and keyboard is close to the atmospheres of Moonmadness or even Rain Dances. The band is a trio with some additional guests and let me say that Cycles is a track that can stand up in front of the best Camel songs.

Also "Clouds to Owings Mills" travels on this kind of soundscape, with odd signatures, a jazzy mood and a guitar which may bring Andy Latimer to mind. So is it a Camel clone? Absolutely not. Even though the influence is evident, also in the skillful drumming of Mikhail Kilchin, there's much more to come in the following tracks. And, believe me, the first two tracks are already a good reason to have this album. This second track is closed by a guitar part reminding of Fripp and Starless.

"Stone and Lydia" is harder to compare. It's another instrumental showing the full belonging of the band to the prog world. On this one I like in particular the passage from slow to uptime through an organ chord sounding like a Hammond. During the 8 minutes of this track a lot is going on. There's an excelent bass base behind a flute part, I can't say if there's more Camel or more King Crimson or...well, there's a lot of Worm Ourobouros. This is the band and this is up to now the best album I've listened to in 2020.

"Quest of the Kingfisher" shows also the influence from classical music. I'm not an expert, it brings Stravinskij and Mussorvskij to my mind, but in 5/4. The more I listen to this album, the more I like it.

"Mulidaran" starts with drums and flute, it sounds between far eastern music and Claude Debussy, then becomes jazzy: bass, keys, drums and the usual flute. There's also a bass solo, very interesting because of the use of chorus and distortion on it (at least those seems the effects used to my ears).

Proceeding, the album becomes a little darker, and "Ascension" is the first real surprise: a Crimsonian start which falls unespectedly into Zeuhl in perfect Magma style. Another great track with solid arrangement, unusual signatures and skillful playing with a bolero interlude, and all this stuff in few more than 5 minutes. This is also the first track with vocals. It sounds Kobaian.

An intriguing tiitle track: "The reality you can't stop dreaming". Like the previous track it has various signature changes and a dark Zeuhl atmosphere. 3 minutes full of rhythm, a sudden stop and...flute, which seems inspired to Jimmy Hastings and Caravan this time. But this is a sort of epic which in its 13 minutes of duration offers a number of different situations. Not easy to classify, it's a kind of "the dark side of early Camel" if something like this makes sense. I can compare the structure of this track to "Lady Fantasy", but it goes through totally different ways.

"The Whistler Shrill" starts with a chamber opening that has also something medieval or even celtic inside, but still very dark. Like Art Zoyd, but more "accessible". When the vocals arrive we are again in the Magma realm. It's another complex track which has also very melodic parts.

The closer is the simplest track in terms of technicalities. The gaelic title should mean something like "grown beard" (thanks to google). Its meody is so captivating that when it end makes me wishing to restart the album from the beginning.

Before the end, I must spend some words for the three guests, in particular Alexandra Gankova whose xylopone and vibraphone add a lot to the tracks.

I'm entusiastic of this album. It's March 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, and up to now this is the best album I've listened to this year.

My first 5 stars album of the year