SONIC BOULEVARD

For a third solo album Bodin was actually heading for an album, much more ambiental compared to his previous ones and based on a limited budget, originally intented to be sold via the internet.After three weeks of hard work Roine Stolt was called to share his opinion.He proposed Tomas to record the album in a proper way, because he thought it was too good not to end up in a physical form.The record company offered the green light and Stolt was of course among the participants of the recordings as where also Jonas Reingold, Hasse Bruniusson and Zoltan Csorsz.Anders Jansson was recruited to sing the vocal parts and an experienced JJ Marsh was offered the main guitar role.''Sonic boulevard'' was released in 2003 on Inside Out and features another three guests on sax and percussion, among them was Ulf Wallander, sax player on Nya Ljudbolaget's sole 81' album and a regular participant on The Flower Kings' albums.

''Sonic boulevard'' of course does not sound as a low-budget production after the fully professional recordings, but it does not sound either like the initial descriptions commented by Bodin himself.It does sound most of the time like a lost THE FLOWER KINGS album, pretty reasonable when you think that the whole band-family was playing on this.Though Stolt appears only in a pair of tracks, Marsh appears to wear his shoes and delivers some beautiful melodic and jazzy guitar moves in the album.I guess the ambiental description goes for the lack of bombastic orchestrations and the powerful grandieur, which appears every now and then in a FLOWER KINGS album.Otherwise ''Sonic boulevard'' follows more or less the same musical values, except it sounds a bit more closer to old-fashioned Symphonic Rock ala KAIPA or DICE, as the music is full of Classical preludes and interludes, Mellotron waves and intelligent guitar work, all executed in elaborate arrangements.Dreamy textures and long instrumental orchestrations offer what any lover of Classic Prog can dream of.There are only a few tracks, which escape the rule, and come either with a Lounge profile with atmospheric keyboards, piano and sax plays (like the closing ''The night will fall'') or with a more pronounced jazzy taste, which still hold a deep sense of melody (like ''Walkabout').But the most symphonic tracks are the ones that win the race here, very nice and refined arrangements with beautiful keyboard variations by Bodin and a trully crafty guitarist like JJ Marsh.

More tight than ''Pinup guru'' as a whole, this time the reason a Bodin album loses some ground is the abscence of dynamics.Not a trully serious flaw though, as the arrangements are mostly well-worked and clever.Strongly recommended...3.5 stars.