«SATURN. INSIDE THE ELEMENTS» Сатурн. Внутри Стихий

Inspired to Saturn, both as planet and divinity, the album is opened by Shani who isthe divine personification of the planet Saturn in Hinduism. Musically is a typical Senmuth's track: a dark cinematic repetitive theme backed by distorted guitar and enriched by ethnic percussion. There's not much Indian music, then it fades into an 18 minutes epic which represents the core of the concept. It's a dark psychedelic track. In the first two minutes the guitar works in background in an apparently chaotic way, then the track takes a different shape: a kind of symphonic metal. Two more minutes and it changes again. Lot of things into this track. Unusual chord progressions, distorted bass backing a clean piano, winds and storms. This is about the planet.

The third track is about a physical phenomenon: "Enceladus Cryovolcanism". Harp notes on a windy background. Quite psychedelic.

Honestly I have no idea of what a Musica Pearl Thread means in relation to Saturn, but it may have something to do with the planet surface and the curves painted by the motion of gas on its surface. The track has an interesting melody sustained by a deep bass which unfortunately doesn't stand for the whole track. Anyway, it's unusually melodic compared with the normal Senmuth's output. The last minute seems to belong to a different track, but it's not bad, too.

Electronic noises, possibly the same captured by probes, start Northpolar Hexagonal Cloud Feature. This is a very weird astrophysical curiosity: the North pole on Saturn has a perfect hexagon painted on it. A slow crescendo driven by bass transforms the noises. It's dark, but it may even work as soundtrack for a documentary. Very interesting.

Is CrAO related to chromium oxide? Possible. Now there's some piano and even a bit of acoustic guitar in the deep background. The melody seems to be played by a cetra. If it wasn't so dark, it could be considered a newage track. The drone drums are similar to Vangelis' Chariots of Fire, but we can't expect anything non-dark in a Senmuth's album.

Back on Earth, in the age of the Roman Empire with Saturnalia: the Magna Mater orgiastic rituals. An electronic disease explodes suddenly after a long intro and persists when the main theme from the intro is restarted.

Among The Star Placer is exactly a space-rock piece. Dark, of course, it really gives the idea of space travel on a dark solitary starship. Senmuth has given more importance than usual to his bass which also in this track plays very deep notes.

Now an indian mantra dedicated to the Shani of the first track. Percussion and noises are companions to the mantra sung by a female voice. It makes it not suitable for meditation, but it's a very interesting mix. This is the album closer: as in any good prog album, especially instrumentals, the last track closes the circle with the first, even if the very last track of the album is a 4 minutes edit of track 2.

Artists are not guilt for the crimes of their chairmen so I wanted to review a Russian album in the first day of 2022's spring which reminds me to another spring: that of Prague in 1968.