The second album from this musician from England.
Ian Neal does all the guitars, piano, organ, keyboards, synths, programming and the very sporadic vocals himself.
I have worked up a very healthy scepticism against one-man-bands during my fifteen years long hobby as an album reviewer. Albums like this tends to lay around in my inbox until I have to review them.
This goes for this album too. I also got his fourth and so far latest album earlier this morning and that one will be reviewed later this week, I guess.
This album gives us a mix of neo-classical music and symphonic prog. It is labeled as symphonic prog in most of the prog and rock archives. Something I agree with.
The Genesis and Camel references are obvious and so is the references to the bigger classical music composers like Haydn and Bethoven.
This album is a nice, melodic blend of those influences.
The music is not wishy washy or ambient. It is at times pretty epic without being bombastic. There is a lot of interesting details throughout this album.
The music is pretty pastoral and melancholic too at times. The melodies is good throughout.
This is one of the better albums in the crossover neo-classical and symphonic prog landscape. Ian Neal is an artist I will keep an eye on.
3 points
No comments:
Post a Comment