CELESTINA

I understand that the music here is about creating a mood. The dreamy quality of the music and almost-entirely slow pace of the album put the listener in a certain headspace. It's very easy to zone out and start ignoring the music. Maybe that's what they intended - to send the listener on their own little trip.

With the exception of the track Celestina VIII, this entire album is pretty much a quiet, slow, two chord excursion. Time signatures remain in 4/4 throughout. Don't expect anything complex or jarring. Someone once described progressive rock as "music where you don't know what's coming next" and by that definition, this fails, unless you're like me and *expect* more than two chords to the song.

There are some instrumentals and some vocal tunes. Somehow having two lines of vocals per song repeated over and over is supposed to tell the story outlined in the liner notes. Maybe that's why it took three albums to tell the story?

The aforementioned track Celestina VIII is a bit different - it's faster and loud and noisy, but still just two chords.

Let's be clear - it's not bad. The performances are just fine - musicians know it's HARD to play that slow without rushing the tempo - and the vocals have a nice sound to them. Some variety wouldn't kill it, particularly how the keyboard player found a few synth patches they liked and used them the entire album. But is this progressive? No. This may be right up your alley and it isn't bad to put on in the background while doing something else, but I personally don't have the desire to listen to it ever again.