GOTHIC IMPRESSIONS

This debut album finds Pär Lindh and his collaborators taking the ELP sound down a road less travelled. Whilst in their 1970s career ELP ended up finding their music becoming increasingly crowded with incongruous novelty elements and a general lack of thematic focus as a result of the infamous creative struggles within the band, you don't go into a group called "Pär Lindh Project" unless you're comfortable with the idea of Pär Lindh himself having the final say; perhaps that's why I find this album more cohesive than any ELP release with the possible exception of their debut.

In particular, imagine a version of ELP where, on reviewing the dark, brooding atmosphere of "The Barbarian" on their debut album, decided "Yeah, that's what we need to be going for", and where their subsequent original prog compositions and classical adaptations alike were adapted in the service of evoking that very specific atmosphere; they might have ended up somewhere in the vicinity of Gothic Impressions. Make sure to get the CD version; the lone LP release from 1997 cuts "Night On Bald Mountain" from the running order, which I consider to be a real shame.