The heroes of this occasion are Italian guitar virtuoso Emiliano SICILIA and his first solo album "Devotion Materialize". This is a true 'solo pilot' project, as Emiliano plays everything by himself, handling electric and acoustic guitars, bass, lead and backing vocals, plus utilizing a drum machine. The music on the seven tracks has a distinct modern feeling throughout, although ranging from melodic Hard-n-Heavy to extreme Metal (on The New Reality Suite), touching some in-between directions as well, the notorious "guitar hero" style included. On the best pieces, the man resourcefully uses elements of Scottish, Spanish and even American folk music (Country, for sure), but even those can only be regarded as proto-progressive compositions. The musicianship is excellent, the album itself far exceeding the bounds of traditional heavy music, but nevertheless, I would recommend it not to prog-metal lovers, but mainly to those enjoying the work of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Steve Stevens, etc.
Sensitive To Light, a new project by guitarist and keyboardist Vynce Leff (the bandleader of Saens), present their first CD "Almost Human". Not surprisingly, the recording's instrumental canvases are structurally similar to those typical of Saens. On the vocal plane however, the picture is different, because female singer Jenny Lewis tends to folk rock, thus bringing a lot of corresponding intonations to the music. In all, the album is a quite effective combination of neo, ambient and folk rock with occasional digressions to the territories belonging either to classic symphonic progressive or metal. While being beautiful and tasty, this music, however, doesn't shine with any particular profundity or innovation either.
This band is essentially a quartet of guitar, bass, synthesizer, and drums with two 'session' women on pan-flute and vocals, who appear on the 'boundary' tracks and the second one respectively. The recording presents three different directions, and with the exception of the first track, which is a blend of symphonic Art-Rock and heavy Blues much in the vein of early Jethro Tull, the music is free of any direct influences. Once these young musicians performed a decent Jazz-Fusion, but they're in their best form on the longer compositions (2 & 4), so in the future they definitely must keep the style laid here. Unlike the other tracks, there are no powerful drums on these, and are delicate solos of congas in ever changing interaction with those of electric guitar, bass, synthesizer, and flute. The music here is mostly slow and atmospheric and is filled with flavors of the music of the Middle East, so a unique Oriental Space Rock would probably be the best definition of it. Unfortunately, the musicianship is on an amateur, and at best, semi-professional level. But making allowance for the youthful age of the musicians, this recording can easily be rated with four stars, especially from a compositional standpoint. Anyway, the band's performance mastery might grow with years, if they won't leave their music occupations, of course. I hope not, as all they need is to cultivate their talent.
Italy's Stereo Kimono is a classic guitar trio, though there is also a MIDI-guitar in their repertoire. The independently released "Prismosphera" is the follow-up to the band's debut output "Ki", which saw the light of day in 2000. They play a fantastically impressive and absolutely unique music, which only structurally or, rather, by intensity and eclecticism, can be compared to, say, Neurotica from King Crimson's "Beat". The album is 54 minute in length and contains seven instrumental compositions. All of them are of a unified stylistic concept, which is a very effectual combination of guitar-based Art-Rock and Space Fusion with symphonic and even some RIO-like tendencies. Thanks to the active use of MIDI-guitar and overdubs, the trio often sounds like a quartet, as if being complemented by a keyboardist handling a few modern synthesizers. On the first half of the third track, which is stylistically most diverse, there also are very convincingly sounding solos and pizzicatos of violoncello. The composition is perfect, the arrangements are well thought out, and the musicianship of each of the band members is just top-notch, as well as their joint performance. The promo copy they sent me for my review is on an ordinary CD-R, while according to its press kit, the album was released as a full-fledged CD with the 16-page booklet. Please note this, as you would have certainly wanted to have an original CD copy of "Prismosphera" if you have heard it.
(31 min, 'Shepra')
