Short Reviews [ Kashgar - 2020 - "Artefact"]

Five years on from their debut, 2020 saw Kashgar return with their second album, ‘Artefact’. The line-up for this is multi-instrumentalist Marcus Taylor, keyboard player Ben Bell (Gandalf’s Fist) and drummer James Chapman, plus guest singer Marc Atkinson on a few of the tracks. In other words, the core line-up is actually Broken Parachute, whose second album, ‘Living Dangerously’, came out the previous year. However, in this case it makes perfect sense for them to be operating under a different name, as James was not present for the debut, plus their music is actually quite different. What we have here is progressive rock music which is inspired by the fusion of the likes of Mahavishnu Orchestra, Santana, Shakti and Return to Forever but actually moving even further into World Music. There are times when it is the organ and synths of Ben which are at the fore, and others when it is the various instruments being utilised by Marcus, while the importance of the rhythmic percussion can never be understated. The vocal performances from Marc as exactly what one would expect from such a seasoned professional, but to my mind it actually fragments the album in some ways, as those numbers are quite different to the instrumentals and I found the switch quite severe. On their own they are wonderful, with “Light Me Up” a case in point as the combination of layered harmonies, great drums and driving keyboards along with rock guitar is a simply stunning song as it moves between calm and real presence, but it is totally at odds with the likes of “The Unholy Four” and consequently my listening ears had a hard time catching up as it is almost like two different bands and I wonder if the former might have been better off on the next Broken Parachute album instead. Their mix of World Music and progressive is fascinating, and I would rather they had concentrated more on that for the whole album. All that to one side, this is a well-produced and great sounding album with some wonderful ideas within it and is one which can be enjoyed by the listener on the first time of playing and is certainly worthy of investigation.