AETHER

Now, I can be rather ruthless and anything that don't fancy my taste are likely to end up on E- Bay, sometimes in the bin, too. I take no prisoners as my shelves are full of quality stuff with little room to spare.

I listen to zillions of albums and I only keep the ones I find due value in. Admittedly, at times I find it hard to keep track of my collection. Having said that, I had the gut feeling that this album was saved - and it was too, neatly filed under A.

The first thing that impresses me about this album that these musicians dare to start off slow, confidently feeling that pointless fireworks and showing off are not needed. Full marks to them for their courage!

The works gradually evolve into something reminiscent of early CAMEL with Latimer influence ahead of Bardens' organ contributions. Indeed, this album could easily fit into the CAMEL discography of the early '70's! Any CAMEL fan would find this as if it was a long lost piece. There are also some Hackett touches here and there. The focus remains largely on the intelligent guitar work supported by the rest of the band quite well.

Emotive violins alongside orchestra and acoustic guitar followed by grand organ and a jazzy outro complements the album quite nicely. There is not a a hint to indicate any Latino rhythms and that this music was conceived in South-America. That's a relief as Yours Truly is not really keen on overrated folksy stuff.

I care little about the production being imperfect, instead I choose to enjoy the music of these talented artists. This is Brasil, not Hollywood.

Highly recommended to any CAMEL fan of the "Mirage" era. Easily a 4, perhaps slightly above. I could listen to music like this endlessly. Very pleasing, indeed.

This is the debut album and a self produced one from this Brazilian band. It is pretty obvious that Camel is the biggest inspiration for these Brazilians. Most of the stuff here is dreamy, almost new-age at places, with some Camel'esque guitar solos and melody lines. There are also a lot of Mike Oldfield in this album.

The sound is good and so is these Brazilians technical abilities on their instruments. Good, but neither great or exciting.

The music has it's many lows and some positive elements. Good melody lines in other words. The music and the pieces of music here, most of them are instrumentals, are spacy and airy. This album is not for those who likes time changes and nifty arrangements where things always happens in the music. Some of this album is like watching paint dry. But those who thinks Camel and Mike Oldfield is great would strongly disagree with these sentiments. I am somewhere inbetween here. Some of the music here is great. Some are pretty dire. But it is a good album nevertheless which really grows on the listener. But not enough in my view.

3 stars

Aether is one of these bands. Tough they started in the 70's they just recorded their first album, Visions (1999), in late 90's. After the second album in 2002 they disappeared. Thinking about that is quite incredible that their website is still online.

The band was formed by Alberto Curi (keyboards and vocals), Vinicius Brazil (guitars), Fernando Carvalho (bass) and Brandon Ramos (drums). To tell you the truth, Aether doesn't have an impressive debut in Visions (1999).

Visions (1999) is in fact an almost instrumental album, having only one song with vocals ('A New Bright Day') and one with speech as an intro ('Kings & Knights'). Then we have a CD divided into two. The first half has 7 tracks soaked with keyboards and guitars that sometimes are completely out of place, drums and basses that edge the unbearable and corny melodies. Despite the good vocal track with lots of Camel influence, the band's sound is absurdly overproduced and it seems a 80's album, even though it was 1999.

The second half of the CD is more interesting and it's occupied pretty much by the 'Altenburg Suite'. This suite has 6 parts in more than 18 minutes. It's hard to understand why it was divided into 6 different tracks, even though there's no blank spaces between the tracks. A weird suite made pretty much of sounds (like horses, people, etc) and short themes. Good violin guest is presented in 'The Lake' (Glauco Fernandes) and good organ guest in 'Essence Of Freedom' (Eduardo Campos).

Two songs, 'The Woods' and 'The Ocean' that sound out of place after the suite finish the album. Both of them without any surprise or even light to make them shine.

Resuming, a really weak album. Tough I have to admit that the CD artwork (cover, booklet, etc) is amazing. One more case where the box is great and the contents inside not.

Key track: A New Bright Day

Inner Voyages Between Our Shadows is a good album and Aether is a promising group. I´m looking forward to hear their next work. If you´re into 70´s symphonic rock with some strong Camel and Floyd influences, you should give it a try. 3 stars.

Usually, when you talk about the major progressive rock acts from the 70's, some bands just seem to be, somehow, forgotten by people, just because they didn't have a flying piano during their live performances or because they didn't sold millions and millions of album or because they didn't have hundreds of copycats back in the days. Camel is one of those bands.

Although that may be true around the world, at least in this part of the Equator Camel is a fairly popular band among progheads and had surely been influential in this sunny land, as Aether can attest with their releases so far. In their debut, the band Aether shows us that they are heavily influenced my Camel's music in many aspects, from being mostly instrumental, to the type of singing (almost monophonic) and to the ethereal guitars and synthesizers. Also, in some degree, they seem to have some Floydian influence as well. However, unlike other modern bands who look to the 70's prog acts for inspiration, their music do not sound derivative.

There is, however, one big problem with this album: some songs sound way too generic. Don't get me wrong, the album is, overall, great, but some songs just sound like the generic 90's prog, like the songs Whales and November. Maybe that happened because they intended to make a broad approach, experimenting and trying the different aspects of their music instead of focusing in just some chosen few. That may be it, because this debut lack some focus, it seems to be everywhere.

The highlights go to: Millenium, Autumn, Kings & Knights, The Altenburg Suite and The Woods.

Grade and Final Thoughts

Being one of many prog bands that came to life in the 90's in Brazil, Aether was able to deliver a solid debut with great overall quality, but still a bit raw and lacking focus. That would be fixed in their next release, but that is another story. For a very good release like this one, i think 4 stars is a fitting grade.