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Progressive Rock CD Reviews

Nosound

Lightdark

Review by Gary Hill

Fans of Porcupine Tree and Pink Floyd should find plenty to like here. This album has a lot in common with those two bands. I should say that while sometimes music like this (moody keyboard dominated mellow prog) can be a bit tiresome and redundant every bit of this album is fresh. It never wanders anywhere near the land of boring or “we’ve heard this before.” This is actually a great disc. I’d say it’s one of the best of that subgenre.

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2008  Volume 6 at lulu.com/strangesound.

Track by Track Review
About Butterflies And Children
This opening number is a keyboard based instrumental. It’s pretty and haunting, but basically an introduction.

Places Remained
Percussion leads in and then keyboards come over in wonderful layers of sound. It drops way down for a mellow Porcupine Tree meets Pink Floyd verse. It rises up on the chorus and there’s almost a Kraftwerk texture to it. They alternate between these motifs as they carry on. We get a tasty guitar solo later that really brings in more of those Pink Floyd comparisons. This is morphed into an exceptionally powerful instrumental section.

The Misplay
Moody and sedate this starts with an emphasis on artificial keyboard oriented tones. As works through the focus turns more towards symphonic instrumentation.

From Silence To Noise
Clocking in at fifteen and a half minutes in length, this epic is the longest cut on show here. This begins moody and textural and rises up very gradually. Pink Floyd certainly comes to mind as does Chroma Key and Porcupine Tree. We’re around the four and a half minute mark before it really rises up. Then it is still moody and slow. It just has a more powered up approach. The Pink Floyd references are far more evident here. Eventually this is shifted upward exponentially. It finally drops way back down, though and ambient elements hold the piece. Then around the eight and a half minute mark a Floydian guitar solo takes us in a new direction. This deposits us back into the more powered up vocal sections from before. That works through and then drops down to the sedate and this eventually takes the song to a weird spacey section that combines these keyboard elements with sounds of children playing. Eventually the street sounds go away and the keyboards take us out. 

Someone Starts To Fade Away
Piano provides the central instrumentation on this haunting ballad. Truly it’s the vocals that steal the show, though. This is overall a keyboard dominated mellow number, but it’s the emotional apex of the CD. I’d have to say that this is also my favorite track on show. A tasty guitar solo brings us into more “rock” territory for a while. It also at times has a bit of a David Gilmour feeling to it. This eventually ends much as it began.

Kites
This is a very pretty track. While it’s still balladic there’s a more European feeling to it. It also has a more symphonic nature. It gets reworked into a more powerful arrangement as it carries on, but this is still wonderfully moody. It’s another highlight of the disc and the symphonic elements get quite powerful at times.
Lightdark
About the first four and a half minutes here are based in a moody keyboard dominated texture. As guitar comes in later we get more Pink Floyd like stylings. The soloing really feels like the more bluesy Gilmour work in that band. The guitar is eventually the only thing to remain and ends the piece. OK, technically it’s sound effects that end it, but you get the picture.

 
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