MARSHMALLOW MOONDUST

While the depressive and difficult year 2020 caused tremendous lack of inspiration for many people, Antony Kalugin keeps provide us with great instances of progressive music. After a strong symphonic Karfagen's "Birds of Passage" he created a complete solo album using his keyboards, guitars and voice only. However, the diversity and galore of sounds are still present and reveal the great Antony's compositional fantasy (though I realize now that I do prefer hearing of natural drumset). Indeed, both suites sound like fully-symphonic prog artifacts and will be an important part of any progressive rock fan collection.

This is all because Antony did create an awesome album indeed. The first suite, "Marshmallow" is very light and bright. It develops in unhurried and balanced manner from the horal sounds on the beginning to the short reprise in the end through a numerous transmissions and melodic turns. "Moondust" sounds heavier and is more dynamic therefore I like it more. The melody constantly changes, mixing high and low sounds together with dark and bright feelings. Being the beautiful piece of music in the first place, this suite provides the road that is quite interesting to follow. It contains numerous references (the most clear and intriguing is the variation to "The Carol of The Bells"). Again and always, Antony often refers to the previous Karfagen albums, so those, who familiar with them will recognize few brilliant transmissions from the past. The suits are connected and interlinked, so the album in general sounds really monolithic and approaches both to the high standards of progressive rock and very classical symphonic sound.

Short to say, Antony did it again indeed. Congratulations to him!