CAIRO

Cairo is an American band that features virtuosic keyboards (Mark Robertson) very much in the ELP and Triumvirat style, and a lead vocalist (Brett Douglas) who possesses a vocal clarity similar to Josh Pincus (Ice Age) and Dennis DeYoung (Styx) that can so soar richly above the music. (Actually, Noel McCalla's voice from Mike Rutherford's "Smallcreep's Day" also comes to mind.)

The music is mixed very brightly, and overall has a very powerful and inspiring feel, without ever really getting heavy. When I first put this cd on, I was immediately drawn in as the music punches right in on the first beat, with strong vocals quickly following ("It will soon be here..."). Very exciting and layered keyboards throughout the album, excellent driving drums (Jeff Brockman), some fine guitar solos from various guest musicians - all combine to perform some really great compositions very well. This cd is a real treat.

I would have liked more than just 47 minutes of music; I was hungry for more. Unfortunately, shorter albums automatically lose 1/2 a star on my rating scale. But, this cd was the single catalyst for my re-exploration of so much more progressive music over the past 20 years, so I'm indebted to Cairo. Recommended.

4-1/2 stars

Maybe it's me seeing a trend where none exists, but Conflict and Dreams seems to fit this pattern. In the album-opener "Angels and Rage" we can see the members of Cairo acknowledging their debt to Genesis -- the intro to "Angels" is right out of Wind & Wuthering -- but also relinquishing it. By the time "Angels" is halfway through, the listener has been introduced to the essential elements of the band's unique sound.

Throughout Conflict and Dreams the band continues to experiment with lengthy instrumental introductions; only on "Then You Were Gone" (at 8:25, the second-shortest song on the album) do the vocals start during the first minute of the track. But in this respect "Then You Were Gone" begins a trend which will be continued on the next album.

There also are signs that the band's unity had been waning from one album to the next. Cairo has been compared to Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and this seems accurate on many fronts, including the members' level of self-regard. On all three releases, much ink was spent identifying drummer Jeff Brockman and keyboardist Mark Robertson (and originally, guitarist Alec Furman) as the (co-)Producer, Engineer, Arranger, and Mixer. We're even told, with an abundance of Uppercase Letters, "Computer Artwork Designed And Produced By Jeff Brockman." Nonetheless, on their first album, all six songs were co-written by at least two of the key members of the band. On Conflict and Dreams, this was true of five of the six (one song was written and performed by Robertson alone). And on their final album, three of the seven songs were written by one member alone, with Robertson and Brockman each getting a solo turn.

But accompanying this apparent increase in disjunction was an increase in quality. Cairo had its charms, but Conflict and Dreams is an improvement. Nonetheless, Conflict and Dreams still suffers from a lack of compositional quality, something Cairo would go a long way toward remedying with Time of Legends.

The first two songs are standout neo-prog/symphonic pieces. "Underground" has been a personal favorite since this album was released in 2001, but "The Prophecy" has grown on me more recently. Many have remarked on Cairo's ELP and Yes influences, and they're certainly clear here.

The three middle tracks ("Scottish Highland," "You Are the One," and "Cosmic Approach") don't sound unfinished, but even taking into account their lengths, they lack the complexity of the other four pieces. Two are somewhat ambient instrumentals whose place I can't quite figure out: "Scottish," a new-agey piano / synth piece, and the impressionistic "Cosmic Appoach." "Scottish" might have worked as a brief interlude in a longer piece, but within the first half-minute, keyboardist Mark Roberstson has already made his point. "Cosmic," credited to drummer Jeff Brockman, could have been intro/outro music for a suite. In a very similar way, the vocal "You Are the One" is relatively one-dimensional. These three songs occupy about one-quarter of the runtime of Time of Legends.

Considerably more interesting are the last two songs on the album: the vocal "Coming Home" and the album-closing instrumental "The Fuse." The latter is a jazz-rock/fusion track and a bit of a showcase for Robertson (and to a lesser extent, guitarist Luis Maldonado). One thing I like about "Coming Home" is that vocals begin immediately, as they do on "Underground" and "You Are the One." Too many new-prog bands (or new-symphonic, in this case) try to emulate their heroes with long instrumental overtures. Not these guys. Anyway, neither "Coming Home" nor "The Fuse" approaches the quality of the first two tracks, but they're good nonetheless.

With two top-notch pieces, two good ones, and a handful of underdeveloped ideas, Time of Legends is a mixed bag. Overall, I rate it "good, but not essential:" three stars.

In the 90's, compact discs were expensive. Thieves could rob your house and leave with a just stack of cd's, believe it or not. So imagine having a collection of imports like ones from Magna Carta Label. It would've cost you a fortune, but you could say proudly that you didn't own Dookie by Green Day, The Bodyguard Soundtrack or Unplugged by Eric Clapton. Nah man, you were above that, you listened to modern progressive rock! The real stuff, the obscure.

Having tools like Spotify and Youtube, now I can listen to all the records I drooled over in my youth (that little Magna Carta cat catalog seemed to hunt me even today). Which means Cairo. Despite having an art cover screaming Windows 95, Cairo had a professionnal approach and songs that actually made sense. Unlike Magellan (a.k.a. The King of Stink or The Lord of the Yawns, depending on your location), Cairo didn't aimlessly shot hoping to hit the target. They made a Yes \ ELP inspired album that's certainly worth a spin. The last song Ruins at Avalon's Gate is worth a listen, if not a dozen. Lots of stuff to discover and to be ama amazed by their level of musicianship. Many times you hear kick ass keyboard licks and Steve Howe\ Steve Vai guitar work (which is a feat by itself).

Overall an enjoyable and nostalgic record, a pioneer of it's time. The atmosphere is certainly early 90's, a reminder of a forgotten era: the birth of Modern Prog.

After a brief announcing wailing electric guitar introduction that wouldn't sound out of place on any Dream Theater album, lengthy AOR rocker `Season of the Heart' properly opens the album. Despite a ten minute running time, it's a fairly straight-forward track with a main focus on melodic vocal passages and a catchy chorus with numerous little instrumental fills. Clean cascading electric guitar runs, quick little synth dashes and a soaring confident lead vocal from Bret Douglas, it's a somewhat cold, but certainly punchy opener, but not nearly the strongest piece on the album. `Silent Winter' sounds like a gutsy cross between Asia and U.K, another strong chorus with a romantic lyric and a nicely contained instrumental soloing spot in the middle.

Those listening and not being too impressed at this point should persist, as the album all of a sudden bursts to life with an unexpected urgency and determination. `Between The Lines' blasts the listener right away, all Mark Robertson's delirious E.L.P keyboard bombast and Jeff Brockman's thrashing smashing drumming. A variety of synths, Moog and Hammond feature, with thick upfront bass and a bellowing unhinged vocal tear through this powerful piece. A softer 90's Dream Theater-styled number, `World Divided' is a quick return to a more AOR style, offering a `world gone wrong' lyric with a more restrained vocal and plentiful opportunity for lead guitarist Alec Fuhrman to offer emotional soloing.

If the earlier E.L.P flavoured piece `Between the Lines' offered just a glimpse of what the band could really do, the 22 minute epic `Ruins at Avalon's Gate' shows them firing on all possible levels. It's as if the band were thinking `Well, if we only get this one shot to make a great album, let's do everything!' With only a brief vocal passage a few minutes in and a quick reprise at the end, this extended piece is mostly a grand instrumental showcase for the band, a dazzling array of tempos seamlessly shifting back and forth, heavier passages, pompous fanfares and dizzying drama. Rob Fordyce's chunky galloping bass workout is a standout, as is the total dominating slaughtering (but in a good way!) complete keyboard overload from Robertson, his Triumvirat-like piano even reminds me of their `Illusions on a Double Dimple' album. Exhausting and thrilling in equal measures, but thankfully despite the band darting through so many ideas, the piece never sounds directionless. Album closers really don't come much more satisfying than this one, possibly one of the finest vintage/retro styled keyboard dominated epics since the Seventies, and fans of those above mentioned bands should adore it.

Occasionally the 90's sheen gives the album a slightly flat and lifeless sound (most noticeable on the first proper track `Season of the Heart'), but eventually the sheer melodic compositional skills of the band and their talented instrumental displays more than grab hold of the attention. Have a bit of patience and take the time to listen to the whole of the album instead of making a rash judgement on the opening few tracks, and chances are you'll end up very impressed and surprised! `Cairo' is an album well worth snapping up if you happen to come across it, and the band deserve a bit more attention and praise for their efforts here.

Three and a half stars.

"Conflict and Dreams" is the second album by Cairo, said to be slightly more together than the first and showing the band's development of an individual sound. Based on hard rocking electric guitar, a wild organ, and a fast-paced rhythm section, Cairo's music is a bit like Uriah Heep with more speed and prog than what Heep was actually recording in the nineties. In some ways Cairo could sound a bit like Steve Morse when he rocks out but with a guitar playing style more like a generic metal band than Morse the Great.

By every account, this rock out melange of lengthy songs featuring a healthy dose of tempo shifts, time signature changes, flashing fingers across the keyboard, vocal harmonies (at times), and strong melodies played over hard and heavy guitar and punctuated by brief atmospheric intervals of synthesizer now and again should be an absolute delight to my ears. It's almost like Yes on speed!

However, my lingering impression of this album after two years is that it is lacking something. The first two tracks come off pretty strong. "Angels of Rage" show the band playing as well as any prog metal band, and "Corridors" has a strong melody and catchy intro, plus more synthesizer to offer a soft contrast to the metal guitar. "Western Desert" shows the band at full tilt, going like a metal version of Glass Hammer almost. Rhythm changes come continuously as the guitar solos dive and slice along with the steady drum beat.

But by the time the vocals come in, my first dissatisfaction with the album becomes clear to me: I don't really care for the vocals. Now it's not that he can't sing. Bret Douglas has a strong and powerful voice that well suits the music. It's perhaps the timbre of his voice that doesn't grab me. Realizing this makes it difficult for me to enjoy the sung parts of the songs. Others may not think so.

As "Western Desert" moves into a lengthy instrumental section, I also find my mind can't remain focused on the music. A shame really as there are some very nice moments and some great playing. But one thing that tires my patience is really long solo sections. I enjoy prog because epic tracks don't tend to rely on extended jams but instead feature complex and varied music. After the ten-minute mark, I'm looking forward to hearing something new but the theme melody returns and then for a minute or two it sounds like something is up. But then there's just some repetition until nearly the final minute when at last the awaited change occurs, interesting, refreshing, and over way too soon.

The only real contrast to show up on the album is the short acoustic instrumental, "Image". It's a pleasant break after 40 minutes of mostly driving hard rock, organ and guitar solos, and appreciable rhythm and melody changes that by now are starting to sound formulated.

The last two songs, "Then You Were Gone" and "Valley of the Shadow" continue on in the same vein as most of the album. There are plenty of highlights, like the guitar melody at around 2:30 on "Then You Were Gone" and the almost Deep Purple-esque organ solos or ELP-ish fiery keyboard solo of "Valley". This final song in particular seems intended to be a masochistic finger exercise on organ, piano, and synthesizer.

Certainly any one song added to a mixed playlist is likely to impress anyone with a taste for heavy prog or progressive metal. The album is chock full of searing instrumentation, prog rock at its most intense and frenetic at times. But overall the album feels too "samey" to me. Perhaps if I liked the vocals more I might regard the album more highly. I'm not surprised to see that some have awarded "Conflict and Dreams" with four stars. It's worthy of it. For me, however, three stars is the maximum as I still can't really warm up to it enough..

The music on the 6 track, 53:39 minutes long album is progressive rock in the keyboard/synth heavy neo progressive vein. The neo element is mostly due to the choice of "artificial" synth sounds and the sometimes AOR influenced vocals/vocal lines. There´s also an obvious Yes influence in the way the band use harmony vocals and also a few nods toward Emerson, Lake & Palmer in the keyboard playing (a semi-classical element). The tracks are generally quite long (except for "Conception", which is an intro type track). The longest being "Ruins At Avalon's Gate", which clocks in at 22:35 minutes.

The band are really well playing and the vocals are convincing too. Unfortunately the songwriting and the sound production drag the quality of the album slightly down. The songwriting is decent enough, but the material on the album are for the most part not that memorable or original for that matter. Regarding the latter mentioned issue, the sound production is a bit weak sounding. The rhythm section is way too low in the mix and are at times almost drowned in synths, vocals and lead guitars. The lead guitars are as mentioned high enough in the mix but the rhythm guitar suffers the same unfortunate destiny as the drums and the bass, so it´s safe to say the sound production leaves me unsatisfied.

...still "Cairo" isn´t a bad release and for a debut album it does show some promise. To my ears it´s just a bit mediocre compared to the vast amount of releases in the same vein available on the market. A 3 star (60%) rating isn´t all wrong.

Cairo's self-titled album was a slightly immature but very promising debut. In my opinion, the promise was not fully realized until their second album, the excellent Conflict And Dreams. But the present album is a very good debut album in its own right. Most of the ingredients of their sound were already here and the band clearly had talent. This makes for a wholly enjoyable album.

The first three tracks of this album are the best ones, but even these are not even close to the Conflict And Dreams material. The rest of this album is good too, but not quite up to par in my opinion. The 22 minute plus album closer Ruins At Avalon's Gate in particular is somewhat rambling and could have been shortened somewhat for greater effect. The main influence on this epic track is clearly Emerson Lake & Palmer, but the rest of the album is much less obviously inspired by that group. Yes and Kansas are closer.

Out of the three albums by Cairo, I would place this one in the middle. I can recommend it to all who liked Conflict And Dreams, but please make sure you get the latter album first.

Three years after the excellent Conflict And Dreams album, Cairo returned with Time Of Legends. While this third album of theirs is a bit more diverse and varied, it is also less powerful and less memorable. With Conflict And Dreams, Cairo gave me the impression that they were screaming in my ears "Listen to us!! We are over the top and really very talented and our music is super great!!". With Time Of Legends they seem to want to tell us something much more modest: "You can listen to us if you want, we are quite alright". The music is still good here and it is an enjoyable listen, but certainly some of the passion and fire of Conflict And Dreams is sadly lost.

By some people a bit less of the Emerson Lake & Palmer-inspired bombast is probably considered a good thing, but in this case I think something important has gone amiss. That bombast was a large part of what made Conflict And Dreams so great. On the present album, they even give us a couple of quite understated almost New-Age like instrumental passages (though, one of which suddenly bursts into an intense Toccata-like passage). The vocals are also less passionate somehow.

After the release of this album, Cairo would disappear without a trace leaving the fans without any information of their whereabouts. Time will tell if they will ever make a comeback.

Time Of Legends remains a pretty good and pleasant album, but slightly disappointing after the powerful Conflict And Dreams.

Out of the classic Symphonic Prog bands of the 1970's, Genesis seems to be the one that has attracted the highest number of followers (most notably in the British Neo- Prog movement). King Crimson and Yes have their fair share of followers too, though there seems to be a lot less of them in comparison. Emerson Lake & Palmer have even fewer followers. Cairo has elements of several of these and other bands, but the influence of the latter band on the sound of Conflict And Dreams is undeniable. Mark Robertson's keyboard playing is very much in the style of Keith Emerson, both in playing style and in the actual keyboard sounds he uses. This is especially true of the Hammond organ, but the synthesizers and the classical piano too readily bring Emerson to mind. The drumming of Jeff Brockman and the bass playing of Jamie Browne is also rather similar to that of Carl Palmer and Greg Lake respectively. But there the similarities with Emerson Lake & Palmer stop. The sound of Conflict And Dreams is indeed keyboard-dominated, but they also rely heavily on the (mostly electric) guitars of Alec Fuhrman, and the lead vocals of Bret Douglas are more Journey/Boston-like (but the backing vocals are more towards Yes). Cairo is thus more Rock than Emerson Lake & Palmer ever was. Traces of Kansas can also be heard.

Some say they can detect traces Dream Theater, but even though the success and fame of Dream Theater most probably helped a lot to pave the way for bands like Cairo, the Metal influences in Cairo's music are superficial at best. It is perhaps true that Cairo wear their influences on their sleeves, but it is unfair to dismiss them as an Emerson Lake & Palmer-clone or a "retro-Prog" act. Cairo utilizes a modern production and injects some modern influences into their brand of Symphonic Prog.

All members are clearly very talented and the actual material is strong and melodic. The albums consists of six tracks, four of which are over ten minutes in running length which creates lots of opportunities for great instrumental workouts without becoming directionless. All the songs are good, but Angels And Rage and Corridors are the absolute highlights for me. The album is very good as a whole, but I feel that the first half of the album is somewhat stronger than the second half. It was wise of them to put a short and relaxing instrumental after the 17 minute plus mastodon of Western Desert which helps tp keep the album varied. But despite this, with a total running time of over an hour, I must admit that the excitement tends to wear off a little bit towards the end of the final track. But once it is over, I desire to hear the album again which is the mark of a great album.

Highly recommended!