Short Reviews [Kevin Kastning / Sandor Szabo / Balazs Major - 2022 - "Ethereal V"]

The latest in Kevin’s ‘Ethereal’ series finds him on 17-string Hybrid Extended Classical guitar and 15-string Extended Classical guitar, and he has been joined here by Sandor Szabo (Orchestrations) and percussionist Balazs Major. Often, Kevin’s works are fully improvised as he bounces ideas with like-minded musicians, but I am not sure that this the case this time as the release sounds more like a modern classical piece of music as opposed to his normal approach. There is undoubtedly a huge amount of atmosphere being captured within these notes and I have been a fan of Kevin’s approach for years now, as each release does something quite different and takes us into new territories and that is very much the same again here. Given it is not unusual for Kevin to be playing a 36-string guitar, here he has kept the numbers down, but there are very few musicians who would attempt to play these instruments, not at least if they wanted to stay musical as opposed to just getting some sounds. This is music to make us think, to be listened to intently, and definitely needs to be played on headphones when one has the time to do just that. Four of the songs are relatively short (at least in Kevin’s terms) at 6-7 minutes, but it opens with the first segment which is more than 21 minutes and allows all three musicians to come in and out as the music swells and fades. It is quite important to note the cover photography as I can certainly imagine this being celestial music of the stars. Kevin has now released more than 40 albums in various different musical combinations, and I have heard all he has released in the last few years, each one being a delight, and this is no different.