THE DARK THIRD

Every once in a while one comes across something that immediately knows to captivate you, no matter what that thing is; a car? A new house in some new town? Maybe even a person you've met somewhere? What's most important is to cherish these special moments. Like many other things, this whole metaphor also applies to this extended musical universe. Because it is so easy to obtain music digitally nowadays, people, myself included, tend to pay less attention to what they're actually listening to. So sometimes you listen to something that one of your many MSN Messenger contacts sends you, or a file you accidentally downloaded from the internet or even *and of course this is NOT the 'done thing'* play an album in a record store and you initial response is something along the lines of "Wow!" Well it happened to me on quite a few occasions before and on one of those occasions that specific artist had the pretentious yet promising name "Pure Reason Revolution".

I had heard of the name before, but back then this band was not as big as they are becoming right now (with "The Dark Third" being seen as one of the better albums of 2006) and it was hard to come by samples of their music. So I just 'forgot' all about them and focused my attention to other things instead. But what I did remember of those first mentions of this band was that people seemed to describe their music as a sort of mainstream Pink Floyd and being someone who likes being spaced AND rocked out by music this description sounded very promising!

And then, better late than never, it happened. I received a copy of the "Cautionary Tales for the Brave" mini-album and right from the beginning I knew that I was listening to music of high quality. And the aforementioned description of the music I found most correct. This surely did its job when it came down to spacing as well as rocking me out! And I did not mind that the overtones were more 'rock music' than 'space rock'. it just sounded nice!

So I decided that it was about time for me to discover what secrets the band's full-length debut held in store for this chap. So I tracked down a copy and gave it a go.

Could it live up to the expectations created by the EP? - It surely did, even though this one took a bit more time for me to warm up to its beauty.

The biggest difference between this album, compared to the EP, is that it is less in-your-face from the start. Sure this one most definitely rocks -at times it is even heavier than the songs available on the EP! - but songs like the opening track Aeropause balance that rock aspect out with some typically Floydesque sections. At first I thought it sounded a bit too much like Gilmour's crew, which was not really a good thing, but the further the album progressed and the more I listened to it, the better and seemingly more unique the music began to sound!

I've seen PRR supporting Porcupine Tree on their most recent tour and I couldn't help but noticing a few things. Firstly, they are as good live as they are on CD, but secondly. they tend to lose that atmospheric aspect of their music when they perform live. Mainly because there was no fixed keyboardist present on stage. Once could say that PRR has two different faces: the ethereal, dreamy world of studio and that energetic live body. This album is a good starter, I'm curious what this talented group of young musicians present us next time around.

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