NO MASKS

Grey Mouse is a Russian psychedelic/progressive rock band from Russia who were formed in Moscow in the late 90's by bassist Alexey Chunikhin, who has remained the only constant part of the collective. They are now with the wonderful Addicted/No Name label, and all their albums are currently available through their Bandcamp page. My thanks to Anton for sending me through all their studio albums so I can hear the changes and progression from the band over the years. 'No Masks' was their debut, released in 2005, at which time Alexey had been joined by Nikolay Mitenkov 'Dorian' (vocals), Dmitriy Kir'yakov (guitar) and Kirill Chunikhin (drums, percussion). This release was dated when it came out, as it is looking back to the late Sixties/early Seventies in many ways, and somehow, I kept being reminded of Jethro Tull's 'Benefit' for some strange reason.

This is only just a little quicker than stoner speed, but it contains many of those elements including compressed riffs, yet all with a psychedelic bent. There is a great deal of space within the arrangements, and although Nikolay does not have the most melodic or interesting voice, this album is quite compelling, due in many ways to the innocent naivety of it all. There is no force here, no pressure, rather an honest band playing as if they are in a rehearsal room for the sheer pleasure of doing just that. Vocals are sometimes in Russian, sometimes English, and they even break into good old fashioned Seventies punk in 'How?'. This is an underground band with plenty of Western influences and if it were not for the language one would never believe this was from anywhere but the UK. This is a solid album which provides a good base for what was to come, but probably not the one to start with if coming across this band for the first time.