CORVUS STONE

This multi-national group came together almost by accident, starting from a chance meetings on Facebook. The music is written by the Finnish keyboardist Pasi Koivu, who is on PA also as a solo artist. The British guitarist Colin Tench is known from Ocean 5 (among others), and like the album of that group - or project - , also this one has the nice cover art by Sonia Mota. Very barbeque-flavoured cover, but the music has many spices as well. It's mostly instrumental, adventurous, playful and joyful, sometimes like jazzy rock'n'roll; musicians are audibly enjoying themselves. 21 tracks is a lot, and it comes as no surprise that not all of them are very thoroughly thought. The nature of the compositions is sometimes close to a happy jam session. Here and there it's flirting eclectically with various music genres from country rock to avant-garde, etc, without ever getting very difficult listening.

'Ice King' is an atmospheric vocal song, sung gloomily by Blake Carpenter. 'Corvus Stone' is a long intrumental and among the highlights with a progressive tendency and beautiful, melodic playing. And so is 'Cinema' (10:50). 'Moron Season' is another vocal song, starting like a tender Camel ballad but soon turning into a fast and tight track. The riff from 'Smoke on the Water' appears for a moment, and the album has several such little surprises. It's up to the listener how valuable they are.

'Pilgrims' is a slow track... no, it isn't. Hmm, this sums up the major problem with this album. It is too full of everything, restless to build on various moods without a hurry. There's not much of cohesion, like several reviewers before me have already pointed out. In the end, I can't exactly say how much I'm impressed. Halfway the album I'm actually losing my concentration. The playing and production are both excellent and there are myriads of fine musical ideas, but sadly they mostly result as very short and artistically a bit pointless and half-baked tracks. Surely some further self-criticism and thinking of the album continuity would have improved it. More of Corvus Stone music is already being made (they felt that the CD maximum length of 80 minutes is way too little), and I'm looking forward to hear it. Hopefully they have a little more patience to really work things out next time.