Tuesday 27 March 2018

Karfagen - Messages from Afar: First Contact (2017)


The ninth album from this Ukranian band.

Karfagen is a sextet on this album. Antony Kalugin on keyboards and vocals has got help from a guitarist, drummer, bassist, sax player and a female keyboardist and vocalist.

I have reviewed some of their records for this blog, ProgArchives and # 1 of this blog. I have not liked all their albums. But I do respect Antony Kalugin as one of the leading lights in today's prog rock scene together with Fabio Zuffanti, Steven Wilson and Roine Stolt. He is up there with these three guys.

Karfagen is also leaning quite heavy on the more heavy and melancholic Eastern European and Russian classical music.

That is not so much the case on this album. An album which is pretty joyful compared to this tradition. There is still substantial darkness and melancholy in the music on this album.

Karfagen has gone slightly afar into the space on this album. But it is not space rock by any means. There is a lot of really great guitar solos here and a lot of keyboards wizardry.

The music is pretty much neo-classical symphonic prog and it is really good too. There is a lot of music to enjoy on this one hour long album. It is one album you should check out.

3 points

 

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