Short Reviews [ Vespero - 2021 - "Songo"]

Here we have the 12th studio album from Astrakhan band Vespero, where we find them moving again in very different directions from what they have delivered previously. We have the same core line-up as for 2020’s ‘The Four Zoas’, in Ivan Fedotov (drums & percussion, wave drum), Arkady Fedotov (bass, synth, noises, vocals, recorder), Alexander Kuzovlev (guitars, saz, mandoline), Alexey Klabukov (keyboards, synths) and Vitaly Borodin (violin, accordion) but have also added Alexey Esin (gusli, MIDI-saxophone) and Sonya Vlasova (vocals). The album has plenty of vocals, but they are wordless, another sound to be blended in with the music which is being taken in all sorts of directions. For a band who were originally associated more with space rock they have now gone headlong into progressive folk alongside new world and classical to create something which is pushing boundaries so one never knows what is going to come next with the listener being taken along for the ride. The music is incredibly layered, so while the rhythm section would be in the background, we could have violin being joined by another four or five instruments all playing the same melody to create a multi-channel approach. The instruments may be distorted, or clean and clear, playing simple lines or weaving thread of intricate delicacy which have no business at all of being wrapped together. Russian progressive rock bands often bring in classical forms and do sometimes mix with folk, but here we have an album which does it all so very well indeed. The booklet contains a woodcut artwork for every song so one can understand where the band was coming from, while the song titles themselves are in a mix of different languages from English to Esperanto, Bulgarian, Estonian and others, with the title being in Esperanto where it means “dream” (why create a language to be the international norm when English is spoken pretty much everywhere? Go figure). To have the dream to go with this music one must have previously consumed copious amounts of red wine along with strong cheese way too late at night, as yet again Vespero have created an album which is vibrant, exciting, and so very unusual indeed.