UNDERGROUND COMMUNITY

Barcelona is well known for producing some great Catalan Prog in the 70's, but it was time to give a shot to a ferw more modern-sounding groups during the millenium.So this is Harvest, formed in 2008 under female singer Monique van der Kolk, keyboardist Jordi Amela and guitarist Jordi Prats.After a 6-track demo drummer Alex Ojea and bassist Roger Vilageliu joined the project and in 2009 Harvest begun performing live (even supporting Marillion) as well as writing material for their debut.It was eventually a self-produced work on their own Red Phone Records under the title ''Underground Community'' with the cover artwork made by Antonio Seijas.

Armoured with a fantastic vocalist and an array of emotional melodies Harvest offered no less than 13 laid-back short tracks full of dreamy soundscapes, ethereal atmospheres and harmonic passages, strongly influenced by Hogarth-era MARILLION as well as the straighter tunes of female-fronted bands like MAGENTA, PAATOS, IONA or MOSTLY AUTUMN.Words can't describe Monique van der Kolk's sensitive, romantic and super-emotional chords and she is definitely the biggest weapon in Harvest'a array with her ethereal vibe and crystalline choirs.The music on the other hand is far from adventurous, this contains simple arrangements full of melodic/psychedelic guitars and very light background synthesizers (and occasionally organs), as it was seemingly written around Van Der Kolk's style of singing.The result is a mixture of light-weight Neo Prog with strong Post Rock passages and a few touches of Electronica, thus resembling the approach of PAATOS.The melodies are quite strong and the tracks rather memorable, always highlghted by one of the best female singers around, however the album faces a real problem in the abscence of any kind of diversity, as all tracks sound extremely similar, yet ''Underground Community'' hardly becomes boring along the way.There is also a nice cover version of MARILLION's ''Waiting to Happen'' from the ''Holidays in Eden'' album included.

Soft female-fronted Neo Prog/Post rock of decent inspiration, featuring a fantastic singer and above average atmospheres.Still I insist this band should make their sound more flexible in the future.Recommended.