THIS MORTAL COIL

It's RACHEL'S BIRTHDAY - the Germany's prog band that I have just reviewed couple days ago through its only one album "An Invitation to Rachel's Birthday" - that triggered me to explore with SONIQ THEATER. I just wanted to know where-about RACHEL's BIRTHDAY band that has produced that wonderful debut album. The search led me to the name of Soniq Theatre. Rachel's Birthday disbanded and the keyboard player - Alfred Mueller - formed a one-man band called Soniq Theater.

Musically, I expected something very close to "An Invitation To Rachel's Birthday" album with tight composition; theatrical and operatic singing style; symphonic prog music with excellent guitar and keyboard solos. But I found a totally different music style through this fourth album of Soniq Theater: "This Mortal Coil". As you might have guessed, it's more on exploring the use of modern keyboard and other electronic equipment. Nothing wrong at all, but I got some problem enjoying electronic drum sounds where I find that it usually function only as beat keeper and never produce dynamic drumming sounds - especially when the music is entering transition pieces. I also love bass guitar sound especially in prog music and I cannot find through this album. This album is too much electronic with a lot of programming and sequencing techniques; almost all sounds produced do not seem natural to me.

On composition, I don't think this is a bad one as almost all songs have relatively good structural integrity. However, do not expect that this album offers you with a complex structure as I observe almost all tracks have simple structure. Alfred has used the same or similar tagline melody / rhythm and build his keyboard work - solo and improvisations - on top of it. Some rhythms sound annoying to me as they sound like something called as classic pop instrumental music.

I leave it up to you to decide whether or not to purchase this CD-R as I cannot give you a firm recommendation on for which group of people this album would favor. Even, if you like Rick Wakeman's early albums or ELP or Triumvirat or Patrick Moraz (basically all keyboard-based music) you might still not like this album. But this is not a bad album at all! Keep on proggin' .!!!

Yours progressively,

GW