2002 - "Mysticae Visiones"
(50 min, "Musea")
Tracklist:
1. Mysticae Visiones 35:48:
a) Prologue (4-53)
b) Birth & Childhood - The Discovery (2-27)
c) Youth - The Dream (2-09)
d) Manhood - The Construction (1-34)
e) Reflection (1-34)
f) Death (2-35)
g) Transition (3-39)
h) Meditation (5-04)
i) First Heaven - Punishment (3-43)
j) Second Heaven - Reward (3-20)
k) Third Heaven - The Beckoning (1-37)
l) Epilogue (2-54)
2. The River 14:55
All tracks written, arranged, & produced
by Carlos Plaza.
Line-up:
Carlos Plaza - keyboards & piano, bass, percussion
Cesar Garcia - guitars
Francisco Ochando - cello
Omar Acosta - flute
Carolina Prieto - vocalizes
Recorded, mixed, & mastered by Kotebel
at "Kotebel's Project" studio, Spain.
Prologue.
"Mysticae Visiones" is the second album by Kotebel. I haven't heard their debut album "Structures", though the reviews that I read of it were very positive.
The Album.
Not looking at the display of the CD player, it is most often impossible to fix a moment of the beginning of a new part of Mysticae Visiones. So I wonder why on the CD, this monolithic piece was divided into twelve separate tracks. (By the way, in the CD booklet, the album's track list looks like that, which is featured in this review.) In fact, we have only two long tracks on this album and both of them were created within the framework of a unified stylistics, the best description of which would probably be the next. On the whole, this is nothing else but a blend of Classical Academic Music and Classic Symphonic Art-Rock with a few of the elements of Prog-Metal and Avant-garde Academic Music. However, two parts of the album's title-track represent a pure Classical Music without any mixtures. These are Birth & Childhood - The Discovery & Youth - The Dream (tracks 1-b & 1-c). A pure blend of Classical Academic Music and Classic Symphonic Progressive is presented on the following parts of Mysticae Visiones: Manhood - The Construction, Death, Meditation, Second Heaven - Reward, and Epilogue (d, f, h, j, & l). The same stylistics, but with the elements of Prog-Metal, is featured on Prologue, Reflections, Transition, First Heaven - Punishment, and Third Heaven - The Beckoning (a, e, g, i, & k). Two of these compositions contain also the atonalities that are typical for Avant-garde Academic Music: Transition, and First Heaven - Punishment (i & k). I was amazed to hear very hard-nosed solos of saxophone on Transition, Meditation, and Second Heaven - Reward (parts g, h, j), while this instrument doesn't figure in the list of the equipment that was used on this album. The main soloing instruments on Mysticae Visiones are an acoustic piano, 'synthetic' yet truly sounding string ensemble, and electric guitar. The excellent, diverse and masterful, rhythm-section, all of the parts of which were manually performed on keyboards (in which I am almost sure), aren't featured only on Youth - The Dream, Death, and Epilogue (c, f, l). The passages of cello are clearly heard on Prologue, Birth & Childhood - The Discovery, Youth - The Dream, and Transition (a, b, c, j). The solos of flute are always distinctively noticeable. They are on Prologue, Manhood - The Construction, Transition, and Second Heaven - Reward (a, d, g, j). Surprisingly enough, only the first two parts (a, b) of the album's title track contain the passages of acoustic guitar. The keyboard backgrounds ("pillows"), as well as really notable solos of synthesizers, are present only on the longer compositions with the large-scaled arrangements: Prologue, Transition, Meditation, and First Heaven - Punishment (a, g, h, i). Stylistically, the second and the last track on the album, The River, represents a blend of Classic Symphonic Progressive and both of the European and Asian Classical Music. On The River, I once again hear the instrument, which is not accredited in the instrumental equipment of this album. And this is more than merely an exotic instrument with a very specific sound. The solos of Japanese Koto and their interplay with the parts of the other soloing instruments (flute, electric and acoustic guitar, piano, and synthesizer) are the nucleus of The River, the musical waters of which are full of wonderful Eastern colors. Filled with the diverse and truly hard-edged arrangements of Classic Progressive Rock, all of which flow to the accompaniment of the tight work of the rhythm-section, this composition is in my view even a bit more impressive than Mysticae Visiones.
Summary.
In my opinion, such a complex and distinctively specific album as Kotebel's "Mysticae Visiones" should have been released on Musea's sub-label Gazul, which was formed especially for releasing the works of "New Music". Really, until now, almost all of the albums that are related to Neo Classical Music, new forms of RIO, etc were released through Gazul, but not through Musea itself. Well, it doesn't matter much, after all. Finally, I can suggest to you that, "stylistically" speaking, such a polymorphous music that is presented on this album masterpiece is, of course, nothing else but Fifth Element. Or, maybe, you'd prefer to define it with a bulky phrase that I used above to describe its stylistic constituents? "A blend of Classical Academic Music and Classic Symphonic Art-Rock with the elements of Prog-Metal and Avant-garde Academic Music." I doubt that such elephant-like sentences as the latter would ever be used to classify progressive bands by the genres.
VM. April 17, 2002
