THE OCEAN OF UNSPOKEN WORDS

After a humble beginning with his `Childhood's End' debut back in 2013, Russian multi-instrumentalist Vitaly Kiselev has been rapidly honing his skills and releasing consistently more complex and lavish symphonic progressive works, with 2016's `The Ocean of Unspoken Words' his most extravagant work yet. It's a well titled set, seeing as how this fully instrumental disc must rely on no vocals whatsoever to carry the keyboard and guitar-heavy vastness on offer, and `Ocean...' takes the most grandiose and bombastic of elements from the music of Rick Wakeman, the Flower Kings, Genesis, Camel, the Par Lindh Project and Karfagen amongst others, delivering a set that symphonic-prog lovers will adore.

Looking at some of the highlights, the piano pomp, chunky bass and ravishing synth runs (Vitaly handing the reins over this time around to keyboardist Alexander Malakhov) of `Perseids' sounds like Rick Wakeman jamming with Renaissance's Jon Camp and John Tout, a strong opener of fancy themes and classical elegance in amongst the whirring electronics. Both `In A Room With Many Mirrors', with its frantic keyboard runs and pounding drumming, and `The Last Meeting's ghostly organ and gothic swoon remind of Japanese all-female trio Ars Nova, and `Who Is There?' is slightly loopy with a quirky Flower Kings-like colour behind some tougher electric guitar bite and keyboard majesty along the lines of the Par Lindh Project.

The title track `The Ocean Of Unspoken Words' is one of the more ambitious pieces of the disc, full of grand orchestration-like synths and dreamy shimmering guitars delivering stirring reprising themes. The first half of `Free Wind And Home Draft' is strident and infectious before floating into mysterious spectral ambience, the reaching electric guitar strains with a touch of blues over superior organ throughout `The Secrets Of Nightlife' could have appeared on the early Steve Hackett solo albums, and the organ-dominated `The Great Dumb (Cinema)' has plenty of brisk and playful up-tempo dashes (and just listen to that tasty spacey gliding synth passage at about the 1:22 mark!). `Late Night Is Early Morning (After The Holiday)' perhaps comes the closest to a Camel-like moment, a more compact rocker that shows off plenty of Vitaly's wondrous guitar variety, ultimately revealing itself to be a frequently joyful and uplifting closer full of hope, and possibly the highlight of the album.

While some sections sound fairly similar to each-other and the music could do with more subtlety and less constant busyness, `The Ocean of Unspoken Words' is complete evidence of a talented artist growing in confidence, maturity and sophistication, delivering an immense work that comes close to being the equal of many of the higher-status acts currently performing in a symphonic style. This is story-telling prog as richly possible without utilising lyrics or vocals, and for fans of any of the above mentioned artists and progressive music proudly in the Seventies Prog tradition, this disc comes highly recommended and is composer Vitaly Kiselev's finest achievement to date.

Four stars.

(Note - Vitaly, if you read this - please don't be discouraged by the instant one-star low votes from a bunch of petty, bitter and inferior music rivals on here. Be confident and proud of your music, continue to compose your superb instrumental works and don't let anyone convince you otherwise of your great worth as an artist)