From the opener ‘The neverending meal’
onwards it is obvious that the vocals will certainly not be the highlight on
this album. Coming across as a poor man’s Pink Floyd this song is of a
mediocre calibre and not the kind of ‘in your face’ song one would
associate with an opening track. Also the following song ‘High meanings’
follows a rather predictable course. Whilst the musical contents of ‘A
bridge beyond the hill’ are more promissing, sadly the uncertain female
vocals of one Micaela Gotelli add a fair amount of naivity to the otherwise
entertaining and competent song. Especially the drums do a great job here
resulting in an alternative version of Hawkwind. The acoustic guitar at the
end of ‘Mindflow’ adds a true medieval feel to the very diverse music.
That same acoustic approach continues during the fragile first part of
‘Magic riddles suite’ whose guitarlines sound very similar to the ones
in the Genesis classic ‘Cinema show’. The combination of guitar and
piano really works well delivering a fairytale kind of song where one would
expect a real cello to turn up. As a matter of fact ‘Magic riddles
suite’ consists of five individual pieces segued into one each delivering
it’s own style. ‘Before the walklight’ is a little instrumental which,
as the title suggests, introduces the actual song ‘Walklight’. The album
closes with the rather repetitive ‘In a lightbox’ which sadly drives on
the weak vocals of Micaela Gotelli once again although the strings in the
background really fit in well with the rest of the arrangement. All in all
not such a bad album but certainly the kind of disc which illustrates the
weaknesses of the band, weaknesses which in turn give these guys the perfect
food for growth so that we can look forward to a possible next album yet
although I do like a fair share of diversification, I wouldn’t mind for
that album to be more consistent next time around. Reviewed
by : John ‘Bo Bo’ Bollenberg |
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