PLAYING LIVE AT ONE MUSIC FEST

Modern-Rock Ensemble is not the only Ukrainan prog act that has a long history and yet only one recent release. This strangely named group plays instrumental, eclectic prog composed mainly by guitarist Dmitry Dorosh. The gig heard here was held in Kirovograd, Ukraine, in December 6, 2014. The set contains both a CD (64 minutes) and a DVD.

I started out with the CD. My very first reaction was "What The F***": some low-fi dialogue in Russian. The subtexts of the DVD explains that it's the dialogue that Yuri Gagarin had just before his space travel. The roughly 11-minute opening track 'Through the Gates of Universe' shows quite openly where the music draws its strongest influence from: the John Wetton -era KING CRIMSON, or the instrumental side of it, to be more exact. The core line-up features a female violinist, and additional musicians play e.g. saxophone, flute, violin and viola. The band is skillful, but the compositions or arrangements were not as varied as I hoped. The Crimson influence is often heard, another good reference is Mahavishnu Orchestra. The music is not very emotional, it's mostly rather serious-minded. I can't say it would sound all the same, for example 'Castles of Birmingham' is more delicate than the rest. 'Comeback to Life' is perhaps the most colourful in sound, starting with a guitar lead reminiscent of 'To One in Paradise' by The Alan Parsons Project, and later at times reminding me of Mike Oldfield's Killing Fields soundtrack.

Eight original compositions are followed (in the CD) by the glorious King Crimson classic 'Starless'. Jason Offen does a pretty good, Wettonesque vocal job. Clearly this tracks is the highlight, simply because the composition itself is so marvelous and beloved (also by me) for decades. Sadly 'Starless' is not contained in the DVD, instead the set ends with the Gentle Giant instrumental 'Boys in the Band'. This track choice also tells something of the band's style. To some extent, the visual side of the concert was a let-down for me. The lighting looks, well, rather terrible to be honest. The large wall is filled with little lights in rows as in the electric billboards. I don't think it looks very good at any moment, whether there's circulating words (One Music Fest I think it was) or spacey movement effects. At least it leaves the musicians in minor roles visually. A good thing is that on DVD mr. Dorosh introduces most tracks (in Russian, with English subtitles) and on CD these are gracefully cut off. The package itself gives no artist information. For the music my rating is 3½, but for the visual level I round it downwards.