ROUND MIDNIGHT

On April 15th the promising Italian band MOONGARDEN will perform on a triple-concert near my hometown The Hague (the Dutch residence city), along with RIVERSIDE from Poland and KNIGHT AREA from Holland. I'm familiar to the last two bands but I didn't know anything from MOONGARDEN so I borrowed their last CD entitled "Roundmidnight" from a fellow proghead (Mr. Kiwi). Listening to MOONGARDEN's music is a special experience, a kind of 'Pandora's box of musical surprises'. It's hard to put this band in a category, perhaps the muscians themselves will hate every attempt from progrock reviewers to do so! My first reaction on this album was "Is this progrock?" but my final reaction is "Great to notice that, after more than 35 years, new bands still succeed to sound progressive!". The music alternates from progressive pop, including warm piano and acoustic rhythm-guitar and melancholic vocals (with obvious hints from RADIOHEAD and COLDPLAY), to melodic progressive rock featuring sumptuous keyboards (lots of fine Mellotron samples) and some wonderful sensitive electric guitar soli. I'm stunned by the beautiful, varied and elaborated compositions, loaded with emotion. In the end the vocalist sings "I'm so damned alone...", I think this phrase epitomizes the feeling of many young people who live in our ultra-modern and technically based society where verbal communication is on the level of the pre- historical times!