Asturias

Suggestion noted, have forwarded it to the rest of the Neo Progressive team :-)

I second the motion...I have looked for them several times here and was surprised not to find them.  The style reminds me of Mike Oldfield at times and, even though it is heavily programmed, has plenty of emotion IMO.

Edited by kenethlevine - January 13 2009 at 22:20

With 2 out of 3 members in Neo having made a decision; we passed Asturias over to the Crossover team. There are symphonic elements in the music; but not to the extent that we feel it would be a good fit for Neo (nor symphonic for that matter).

Forgive me I've not known about progressive rock completely enough, but I consider their style cannot belong to any prog genres because of their characteristic style.
Now I introduce their brilliant album Brilliant Streams here...

First I wanna say I love the word Brilliant Streams and always this word seems to be a cup of freshly-flavoured tea for me.

Indeed there are full of Yoh's intelligence and stubbornness (of course good meaning for us music lovers) for constructing the work.
But simultaneously there are lots of talents in the Asturias and they can make the work really brilliantly streaming, I consider.
The mainstream of their songs is pre-programmed sound and the members can cover the sound with their terrific play.
Especially, believe me, could you let me say Kazumi's drumming and percussion play is superb?
Without his strict rhythm sense, we can't realize this album as its name. :-)

The first track Highland can let us feel nicely-tasted cold water in a river somewhere.
In the song, piano, keyboard, guitars, and percussion...all instrumentals are exploded to be really clear and fresh.
At the same time, we can feel the hardness to live on the land. This song also has such a melancholic face, I always think.

Next track Nostalgia absolutely has a nostalgic atmosphere with classical piano play, strings, synth, and scat voice.
Hearing the song we can't help thinking of our old hometown, old friends, and child-period.
Yes, it should have such a nostalgic feeling and, on the other hand, let us foresee the future.

Rogus is the hardest number in this work. Low-toned piano and key, guitars with heavy riff, and hard percussion!
Can let ourselves push the top of the mountain up and throw away. Very amazing sound!

The highlight of this album Brilliant Streams is the longest song.
It has some parts of short pieces, including dancing and percussive part, beautifully-scatted part, and exactly streaming stardust with each brilliant play.
Sadly over-twenty-minute song is slightly too long to keep our mind concentrative continuously and suggest this titled track be one brilliant stream, not a song.
Naturally we can receive and keep the stream in our mind.

Lastly, I suggest their sound in Brilliant Streams can't hear purely progressive one but surely new-typed sound from Japan.
I'm very proud of ASTURIAS, as a Japanese!
--
from DamoXt7942 MySpace blog http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=1004264991&blogID=472265686

Windhawk wrote: ...and after redefining the guidelines/definitions for Neo-Progressive, Asturias has now been added to the progarchives :-)