DAS LICHT DER MENSCHEN

'Das Licht der Menschen' sounds quite different from the previous ROZ VITALIS output. The instrumentation is almost the same keyboards and programmed drums, but now there are percussions (bells or something) and they play important role. Other differences include more playful quirky sound reminiscent of Gentle Giant, it's more detailed, no soundscaping dominance detected. Also there are more harpsichord and 'flute' sounds and all in all - more meat to the music.

What's even more interesting is that pacewise it's quite a slow album. Each composition has something like one 'usual' dark fast-paced passage, yet the slower parts are dynamic to maintain my focus, all due to bells and more diverse (organ, harpsichord, flute, etc.) short keyboards parts interleaved with each other. The definite highlight is 'Colore pieno di luce' with a colder mid-paced avant-ish start and gorgeous exciting slow-paced organ 8+ minutes part (starts halfway through) with an epic moving coda. Symphonic masterpiece!

Yet I can't call the whole album a masterpiece as there still are some flow-breaking moments when nothing really happens apart from vocals and quiet bells or soundscapes.

Going through the ROZ VITALIS discography in chronological order reveals a lot about the band's development and how they mastered the art of changing things up from the very beginning. DAS LICHT DER MENSCHEN ("The Light Of Humans" in German) is the 3rd album by the St Petersburg based band with Ivan Rozmainsky still taking the lead with his technically brilliant keyboard skills and roller coaster thematic developments. This album is the total opposite feel from the dark, gloomy and depressive "Lazarus" and focuses more on positive emotional responses. According to the band, the three gargantuan tracks on this one represent a trinity of light, where all the tracks contain the word "light" in various languages. It is also designed to be the most complex and lengthy beast in their musical output and at 70 minutes exactly a lengthy one indeed. This one has only three tracks with each clocking in over the 20 minute mark. Moreover, the main emphasis on DAS LICHT DER MENSHCEN is polyphony where two or more melodies independently cooperate to unfurl a larger musical flagship. On this release once again keyboards and electronica are the dominant feature but there is extra attention paid to percussive chimes and Nadezhda Regentova delivers some of her most spectacular vocal skills offering up yet again another brilliant album.

"потоки света трисолнечного" (Potoki Sveta Trisolnechnogo) Flows of Tripe Sunny Light in Russian (27:48) is the longest track in the entire career of ROZ VITALIS and immediately conveys a a more enlightened and optimistic feel than the previous album. It starts out with female vocals and chimes and certainly brings Dead Can Dance to mind a bit but quickly Rozmainsky delivers his magic keyboard touch with all the classical wizardry and chime bell action that creates a feel as if the Dark Ages were ceding into the Renaissance. Once again there is a lot of attention paid to theology and a conceptual focus on unification and enlightenment through music. As always the music whether dark or light is progressive in every way possible. While the music is firmly rooted in classical offerings of past centuries, the jazz and progressive inspired musical ideas sprout up unpredictably and often. Between the keyboards and chimes there is also lots of choral vocal action and there are many moments where if feels like the whole thing was recorded by monks in an abbey in the middle of nowhere. While most of the track has a slow to mid-tempo feel to it, there are occasional prog rock outbursts that include guitar and spastic drumming although like all these early albums the drums sound a little lackluster and needed some attention, however they are a fairly minor role in the mostly keyboard and chime dominated sonosphere here.

"Colore Pieno Di Luce" (Color Full Of Light) in Italian (21:50) picks up well where track 1 left off as it continues the chimes and keyboards but immediately creates a more progressive sound with wild time signatures and polyphonic elements overlapping and creating an interesting contrast from the start. The tempo picks up after a minute or so and begins to sound like one of those eclectic symphonic prog bands of the 70s like Island. There are also folk elements to the mix as it sounds like a symphonic prog band joins in with the folkies. This is a meandering track with no structure really however it's very melodic. It consists of keyboard melodies, chiming percussive marches and Nadezhda's vocals at times. While it is melodic it also has counterpoints that verge on dissonance. A very interesting track that creates different types of tension that always resolve in the end. Another Benedictine Monk sort of church music thang meets Bach inspired classical music and progressive rock excesses. Love it.

"Ablakok, Csillagok, Feny" (Windows, Stars, Light) in Hungarian (20:22) once again begins with chimes and keyboards. This one is quirky as it unfolds with lots of chime percussive action, keyboard runs in a classical Baroque style and odd time sigs. It's pretty much a call-and-response between the chimes and keys which create a Bach-esque atmosphere as if Johann had licked some toads or something and created some music before his time. Just when you think we're living in the 18th century it all changes and becomes rather esoteric chimes, keys and very bizarre time sigs that change up often with some flute sounds, symphonic backings, female vocal "ahh's" and a rather marching drum effect. This one pretty much meanders aimlessly but pleasantly in myriad directions. Pretty cool

This album lives up to the more lightened up hype. It truly is a nice upbeat progressive electronic meets symphonic prog and folk behemoth. It is very quirky as it is both melodic and jittery in its rhythmic parade down a seventy minute time span. It is both traditional in a classical sense and totally unorthodox in creating utterly unexpected surprises throughout its run. Basically the timbres are of a classical nature but their behaviors are very surreal and prog related. They can be smooth and silky one moment and then totally become as wild and wooly as the most extreme avant-prog. This is the reason i love this band. ROZ VITALIS has the mojo to pump out one brilliantly crafted album after another and with DAS LICHT DER MENSCHEN it is utterly apparent that they can successfully create totally opposing moods from one album to the next. As always this could have been given a more professional makeover with various aspects being heightened to greater effects, but this as it stands it quite satisfying in its own right.

I have been writing about Russian band Roz Vitalis for a fair number of years now, but I have never gone back and investigated their early material. However, Ivan Rozmainsky (keyboards, programming, winds, percussion, vocals) sent me birthday wishes a few months ago, along with this album and an EP which I thought I might enjoy. 'The Light of the People' was originally self-released in Russia in 2004 and was their third full-length album. Ivan was joined on this by Nadezhda Regentova who provided keyboards (plus vocals on one of the three songs), keyboard player Vladimir Polyakov plus guest guitarist Sergey Laskin who played on the opening number only. There are only three songs on the album, although there is a total playing time of some 70 minutes, and much of it is instrumental.

What I found completely fascinating about this album is that it owes more to church and baroque music than it does to what I think of as progressive. There is a large amount of woodwind instruments and various percussion, including tubular bells, timpani, and xylophone, as well as plenty of keyboards. Musically it feels like a classical piece in three movements, with melodies coming in from different direction and being repeated on different instruments. In terms of progressive music, I feel this has more in common with Gryphon than it does with what I think of in Roz Vitalis which goes to show just how much the band have changed over the year. There is no sense of rush, but rather one of quiet deliberation, with each note being played by a particular instrument for a reason. This album was released only a year after their second, 'Lazarus', which I have also not heard, and I am at a loss to understand how this could have been recorded so quickly as there was undoubtedly a huge amount of hours spent in a studio crafting this and pulling it together.

For those, like me, who have only come across Roz Vitalis in recent years (their 2018 album 'The Hidden Man of the Heart' is truly wonderful) then it is makes sense to go back in time and hear a band in their infancy who were already making wonderful music.