ONE MAN TELL'S ANOTHER

After a confident emergence onto the scene with the lovely Riktigt Äkta/Lonely Land, Landberk seemed to hit a bit of a sophomore slump with this one. Indeed, part of me wonders whether this is to blame for them being rather overlooked these days as far as Swedish prog groups originating in the early 1990s go - whilst Anglagard, Anekdoten and The Flower Kings both did a good job of building on the sound of their debuts, Landberk chase down blind alleys here.

I think the most exasperating thing about the album is the way Landberk seem determined to repeat mistakes which their influences already made. Take, for instance, Valentinsong, which contains a long minimalistic section which absolutely robs the composition - and the album as a whole - of any and all momentum it has previously established, and isn't even especially good as far as minimalistic avant-garde pieces go.

It's been compared to Moonchild by King Crimson, often cited as the only real flaw with their debut album (an assessment which Robert Fripp himself seems to agree with, if the trimming down of the section in question on recent remasters is anything to go by), and that's no accident, because it's tremendously similar in approach to that piece. In fact, for much of the album King Crimson worship is in full effect, but when that worship extends to repeating experiments which didn't work and in retrospect were clearly mistakes when the Crims tried them, that's a mimicry too far in my book.

Despite not quite sounding like Crimson clones, it's clear that Landberk here do several goofy things not because they necessarily sound good, but because King Crimson did them previously. When their debut album was so wonderfully original, I've got to view that as a serious step down.