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| Back
in the 1990s, there were only two Progressive
Rock bands in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan,
and the Middle Asian 'center' of Heavy Metal,
-
Rare Bird
& Edgar
Poe. For
the first time, the members of these bands
met each other when playing before Rock
Music fans at Tashkent's annual Rock Festival
in 1990. A few months later Rare
Bird & Edgar
Poe
organized their joint live show on a scene
of Uzbekistan's Puppet Show. It needs to
be mentioned that at that time, each of
the bands included seven musicians. Unfortunately,
progressive music was never a popular genre
in our republic, so both Edgar
Poe
& Rare
Bird
quit in the middle of the decade. |
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| Just
before Christmas 1996 (i.e. at the end of
December of 1996) bassist Vitaly Menshikov
(ex-Edgar
Poe)
along with keyboardist, guitarist, & vocalist
Albert Khalmurzayev and drummer Valery Vorobiov
(both ex-Rare
Bird)
decided to form a new band. Both Vitaly
and Albert continued to compose new songs
after leaving their previous bands. Furthermore,
it turned out to be that their compositions
are in many ways similar among themselves
- both stylistically and structurally. Thus,
X Religion
was born. All three of the band members
are, in fact, multi-instrumentalists (especially
Albert) with a wealth of Rock and Classical
Music-based experience behind them. |
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Both
of the albums that X
Religion
have at the moment were recorded at "Sound
X" - an ultra-modern recording studio of
Uzbekistan's Youth Theatre where the band
is based since its birth. Since the middle
of 2002 Val has been using both of the Yamaha
acoustic and electric drum kits. What's
interesting is that the "Dances On Gobelins"
album was recorded long before "Sodom &
Gomorra XXI", though both of them were completed
in 2001. X
Religion's
intricate and quite hard fusion of Classic
Symphonic Progressive and Classical Academic
Music is a wonderful world where practically
alternative contrasts live in harmony with
each other. All artwork from the "Dances
On Gobelins" CD booklet and the band's logo
were created by our close friend and well-known
painter Vladimir Finkilstein (to see his
gallery, click
>here).
Management:
Nabi Abdurakhmanov. |
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