OVER

German band FREQUENCY DRIFT was formed back in 2006, and released their debut album two years later. Since then four more studio albums have been released by the band, all of them through different labels for some reason or other. "Over" is the most recent of these, and was made available through the German label Gentle Art of Music at the start of 2014.

It's kind of weird to describe a long album that uses and visits as many different styles of music as this one as fairly uniform in sound and style, but that is still the case. From almost pop music at times to classical chamber music, a touch of jazz on one occasion, pastoral intermissions, post rock oriented escapades, some riff-driven instances closer to hard rock and even metal can be found. Electronic passages closer to Tangerine Dream have their place, and even a run through a more or less vintage sounding symphonic progressive rock is present. Still, the end result is an album's worth of atmosphere rich, fairly similar music. Dream-laden, melancholic, occasionally dark, beautiful, compelling and strangely enough with a strong impression of a uniform sound throughout. An album that merits a check by those who enjoy subtly exotic, compelling music that strays outside of the common and expected boundaries of progressive rock.