Detailed Reviews [Gabriel Iwasaki - 2015 - "The Journey of Life"]

Prolusion. Peruvian musician Gabriel Iwasaki is perhaps best known in progressive rock circles as the keyboard player for progressive rock band Flor De Loto's album "Eclipse" back in 2018, but as a solo artist he has explored the realms of progressive rock as well as classical music since 2015, with five albums to his name so far. "The Journey of Life" is the first of these albums, and was self released in 2015.

Analysis. That Iwasaki has a classical music background shines through in many of the compositions on this album, and especially in the opening and concluding pieces that are both fairly purebred creations within the classical symphonic music tradition with the latter apparently written in more of a soundtrack orientation. Due to that it is probably not all that surprising that much of the rest of this album revolves around music that can be described as symphonic progressive rock. The fairly short and concise compositions here explore the form in a few different manners. We have songs with a more expressive and vibrant take on the genre, with lively keyboards surging, swirling and playfully dancing around and on top of the core foundation of the song, but also creations with a calmer and more atmospheric laden mood, mode and atmosphere. Funky electric piano details, dirty vintage sounding synthesizers and a suitable asthmatic organ find their way into these landscapes, and in between all of this there's also space and room for a tender piano and cello creation with a more distinct mournful presence. Towards the end of the album we also get a couple of songs that arguably are more in the vein of melodic rock than progressive rock as such. Both of them retain the same high quality as we find on the rest of this album, but explore a slightly different path than the rest of the material on this production. In the minor critique department I note that the vocals, when present, appear to be a bit more on the functional side of matters here, and much the same can be said of the mix and production. There's nothing wrong about either of them, other than not having quite the same quality as the rest of the elements of this album experience. Hence this being a minor critique.

Conclusion. Gabriel Iwasaki approach progressive rock from a classical music direction on his first solo album "The Journey of Life", a production that comes with a couple of purebred classical symphonic compositions as well as a good handful of material that in orientation are following the classic era symphonic progressive rock tradition. If that sounds interesting, and you don't mind a couple of turns into melodic rock landscapes towards the end, this is an album worth taking note of.

Progmessor: January 2023
The Rating Room