PERPETUAL MOTION

The most recent double album of CARY GRACE wanders in the realms of pleasant vintage psychedelic rock music. The album is built from three types of songs; Longer jam-oriented songs varying length from eleven to twenty four minutes, shorter compositions emphasizing melody and songwriting approach, and the some shorter middle sections, resembling little "Promenades" of Moussorgy's "Pictures at an Exhibition" for these tracks.

Beautiful "Scarab" opens the album with pretty acoustic minor-key melodies and vocals, giving fine first impression for anybody open to acid folk, pleasant lady singer's voice and an analogue synthesizer sounds. First "Between Pages" shifts in as calm and melancholic progression lead by keyboards. The next song is then a first longer track here, "Cassiopeia 1572" running over thirteen minutes. Oriental resembling chords starts the song, and it's feeling is more playful and peculiar. Tender instruments are weaved around a bass guitar playing nice high pitch patterns. Like the name suggests, the synthesizers deliver spacey cosmic tones to the pleasant, free and relaxed cosmic jamming built from two modal themes between a more stagnant galactic aural space. Second mellow "Between Pages" introduces the longest track of the album, "Queen of Pentacles" running over twenty four minutes. The song forms a kind of circle, borne from quiet pulsing, distant sounds and growing bass guitar presence, then chord change leading to a theme for singing and marching rhythm which switches with a harder guitar riff. Later the song ends to same theme and ambience from where it started, and between lies a fine, long, hypnotic jam lead by both synthesizers and guitar solos. This spontaneous song really flows pleasantly and logically, pleasantly feeling much shorter than the time it really lasts.

Second disc starts with the third "Between Pages", which delivers more playful feeling after the long trip, and leads to "Dream Catcher", an euphoric and beautiful song with some slightly oriental chords. Fourth "Between Pages" is a bluesy shorite, referring the melody of the first song in a nice way. It prepares well for the following "Helleborus", written and performed in the way of bluesy 60's American psychedelic sound (Jefferson Airplane is an association here for me). In the jam section a violin mingles neatly with the guitar, creating a relaxed hazy summer feeling in line with the mellow melancholy of the other tracks of the album. Vocal sections visit and fade away from the theme variations, and the song ends to an electronic ambience leading to the final title track, "Perpetual Motion". This song excluding 20 minutes of length starts pleasantly, fading in directly to an active improvisation process, pleasantly wandering keyboards presenting the theme for group's support. A bluesy melody theme circles lingering around one note, tension gaining height calmly. The bass progression varies the note progressions for calmly voyaging synthesizers and guitars in a dreamy echo-treated realms, flowing towards a quiet cosmic direction, where the song and album at the end fades.

So, the dominant overall impression for me here was a calm, pleasant, mellow and pretty psychedelic musical trip. Often this kind of music is also aggressive, neurotic and chaotic, but here we get quite accessible, but still vintage, personal and pleasant experience without psychosis. Thus I find the album and artist recommendable to the vintage psych prog portfolio for the fans of the music genre concerned. If describing with comparisons, some kind of idea of the music style could be blending cosmic synth sounds of 70's Hawkwind to the tender "Meddle"-era Pink Floyd tones with touch of psych folk, strong synthesizer presence and female voice in front.