ENIGMARDEN

This is the fifth album from the Russian musical project Roz Vitalis. It is catagorized as RIO/Avant Garde, well, that sounds almost as an understement, what an adventurous but weird progressive music this is! To me the music sounds melodic but very experimental: most of the songs contains interplay between instruments like flute, organ and accordeon or bombastic keyboards and thin female vocals or church organ and Peruvian flute or marimba, percussion and organ or saxophone and organ. The sound of the church organ is often used but I cannot say that this band comes close to the sound from ELP or Trace of Le Orme, it's way too experimental, too fragmentic for me. The final track "Be Aware Of Strangers" (at about 12 minutes) is the most alternating composition featuring many shifting moods and instruments like the Peruvian flute, marimba, organ and female choir. The only progrock band that comes to my mind is the more cacophonic King Crimson ("Islands"-era) or perhaps is Roz Vitalis the avant-garde answer to Mike Odlfield ... ?

This album contains both dissonant and ordinary-listener-friendly elements. On the one hand, the two opening tracks are very dark (but the first one is more listenable due to clarinets solos). The title track and the last track are the most progressive ones. Such tracks are not for those who prefer mainly ARENA-like music. On the other hand, "Ah Ty, Nochenka" is based on the Russian traditional music. "Heartcrying" reminds requiem-like music (and is based on a few chords). "Charitas" is a song with female voices in German. These three tracks (and also "Gentle Spring Of Spring") may be relevant for lovers of CAMEL, GRYPHON or WHITE WILLOW. In short, this album is for both King Crimson-oriented people and those who prefer instrumental prog with wind instruments (if such listeners are not against computer drums).

In 2005 Ivan Rozmainsky decided to expand the Roz Vitalis line-up heading for a fresh album.He recruited female wind-instrumentalist/composer Klara Metelkova and clarinet player Yuri Verba and, along with keyboardists Nadezhda Regentova and Vladimir Polyakov, he had now a more flexible core to work with.The same year Roz Vitalis released their 4th full-length CD-R ''Enigmarden''.

The album is another hard-to-get-into listening experience through the composing skills of Rozmainsky and his multiple influences.The base remains an organ-driven Classical Music with a monster symphonic sound and plenty of synthesizer moves to make it even more grandiose and almost frightening.This is blended with a fair amount of Ethnic sounds through the use of flutes and clarinets, thus creating a very dark and haunting sound close to Soundtrack Music.Imagine a mix of a more bombastic GOBLIN sound with the archaic stylings of OUGENWEIDE and you'll propably get the picture.The music suddenly shifts from pompous and nervous organ movements to soft and elegant flute and clarinet parts and the album at moments succesfully reaches the aesthetics of a normal orchestra.On the other hand though this whole project becomes too excessive, too cinematic and almost painful along the way, with little diversity to offer, while its running time is too long to easily get through it.

To rate ''Enigmarden'' is very hard.I get a feeling though that a live performance of this kind of music has a lot more chances to be appreciated than simply some spins of a CD-R at home.Recommended only to fans of Classical/Avant-Prog with strong Ethnic orientations.

What's good in ROZ VITALIS is that they keep changing their musical style with each album. Sometimes just a little and sometimes the change is for worse. This album is quite a mix and is more diverse than any of their previous works. Gone are the high spirits of their previous album, the mood here is shamanic, often meditative and mysterious. Instrumentation-wise the bells and harpsichord are replaced by clarinets, recorders and flutes. Not that the sound is much richer in comparison to their previous albums, but it's getting there.

What's unfortunate is that they've returned to composing more or less boring pieces like 'Heartcrying' or 'Humilitas', and by boring I mean dominated by one mood/instrument (woodwinds instead of soundscaping of their previous work) or slow-paced with few events. However lots of compositions have interesting clarinet/keyboards interplays or have typical drive of their fast- paced horror keyboards+programmed drums output.

The highlights include 'Lovechoes' - a really diverse composition with lots of changes and lovely sad keyboards passages, unfortunately the composition is spoiled with some synth keyboard irritating noise in the louder parts. 'Precautionary motive' has wonderful clarinet/keyboards interplay with memorable melodies, but again spoiled with the same noise a little. The title track also gives an extreme sense of everlasting change. What a pity these three highlights alternate with too monotonous compositions between them. The first 5 tracks were quite good to set my expectations high, but then the album flow broke.

ENIGMARDEN is the fourth full-length studio album by the St Petersburg, Russian based ROZ VITALIS who has a knack for delivering highly complex albums time and time again and also continues to reinvent their sound on each album. This album's title refers to "enigmatic gardens" of mystery and despite insinuating another concept album is more truthfully a loose collection of disparate songs unlike the first three releases. On this album ROZ VITALIS takes on a more prog folk oriented type of prog electronica meets avant-prog. On this one we get the usual highly complex and erratic musical developments but there are also lots of wind instruments on board. We hear the recorders of Klara Metel'kova who would leave the band the following year and the clarinet contributions of Yuri Verba who also contributed on "Compassionizer" but sadly passed away in 2007. This is also the very last ROZ VITALIS album to feature any vocals whatsoever. Starting on the next album, the band would become totally instrumental but this album is more instrumental than not.

The use of recorders on this one brings visions of high Andean tribes in Peru or Chile offering a glimpse of the high heavens around Machu Picchu and subtly of South American progsters such as Los Jaivas at times, but the highly complex avant approach that dominates always brings the listener back to a unique and utterly bizarre sonic garden where classical and jazz influences always lurk one measure away. In a way, the wind instruments with the chimes makes me thing of European conquistadors in the New World at the time of the great fall of traditional cultures. Much of the content on ENIGMARDEN is actually based in intuitive improvisations. The tracks "Ah Ty, Nochenka", "Heartcrying", "Gentle Spring of Spring" and "Precautionary Motive" were recorded in real time and stand exactly as they emerged upon the first recordings. While there are many world ethnic musical sounds heard on this, when the female vocals appear they convey a high vocal register operatic feel to the album and this is particularly true when the polyphonic organ runs create a classical European feel.

This is another great release from ROZ VITALIS but i have to say that it is less captivating than the previous and following albums for the most part. While i really like the folk aspects, i simply don't find this music to be as intrinsically well designed as the previous offerings. Yes, there are lots of organ offerings, lots of time sig changes, lots of classical leaning workouts that are somewhere between church music and funeral precessions and bring a healthy dose of melancholy. I simply opine that music this complex needs some sort of cohesive glue to bring the whole thing together. Being that the tracks are totally divorced from any sort of continuity, it all feels like a drunken roller coaster ride with everything just feeling like a random parade of sounds that don't ever deliver any sort of pay off. Perhaps it's the low budget production that limits the variations in timbre and instrumentation. While this may have worked for the previous albums where there was a unifying feel to the whole shebang, here something is missing. While the individual tracks are noteworthy of being brilliantly composed although not as captivating, i just find this release lackluster in comparison. Not bad by any means but my least favorite release by ROZ VITALIS thus far.