ARAMSOME SUMS

KHATSATURJAN were a Finnish prog group active in the early years of this Millennium. Their albums are really hard to find, all I got is this one borrowed from Vantaa Library, marked as a demo even though it could qualify as a proper (but quite short) album too. What a pity that they didn't stay in our prog scene longer. The music is vintage 70's style symphonic prog, melodic and complex like e.g. Happy The Man. A hidden gem, actually!

The opening track is a tight, less than three minutes long version of Modest Mussorgsky's symphonic poem 'A Night on a Bare Mountain', a dramatic composition that inspired prog musicians already in the seventies (the American Fireballet). The vocals that arrive on the second track are shared by the whole group, and the harmonies sound good. Well, the pronunciation sometimes has some clumsiness but in a rather charming way. These musicians may not be excellent singers individually... The complexity and the vocal harmonies sometimes modestly approaches (the softer side of) Gentle Giant, but not in the manner of plagiarism. 'The Ultimate Nocturnal Transmissions' is a superb composition, comparable - with its vocal harmonies, classical elegance and jazzy flexibility - to the Irish FRUUPP (especially Modern Masquerades album). This atmospheric song clocks almost 8 minutes, only the slowed-down voice in the end is a bit unecessary.

'Cover Up the Overcup' is a playful little instrumental, very seventies sounding. The production by the band itself is not top-notch, but after all this is a demo release - amazingly brilliant as such. 'A Ballad of a Defector' features a minor role for cello played by the main keyboardist Ilkka Saarikivi. 'A March to the Scaffold' is again an instrumental with art music origins: a section of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. The final track is a four-part epic 'Astral Cycles in Motiongrace'. In it one hears most clearly the humorous aspect of this band. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Frank Zappa is among their influences.

Wow. These musicians have really absorbed the great things of vintage prog - leaving the ELPish overblown grandiosity aside - and come up with a refreshing and beautiful work of art full of genius. Why and where they disappeared?!