CARDINGTON

A front page news: Galadriel's Calibrated Collision Course has laid a delayed egg. That studio album from 2008 was heavily criticized by special collaborators, prog reviewers and ordinary members (here at Prog Archives, on the respective page, you can see how it was criticized and how lowly it was rated). I nevertheless dared suppose that it could announce a new paradigm for prog music, and now, with the release of a new studio album from Lifesigns, I see that this may be true. The opening track, lapidary entitled N (sic!), shows the band's approach to building the relationships between musical sounds following... no, not Galadriel's 2008 prescriptions but Galadriel's 2008 algorithm for making up a prescription. It sounds very unusual and fresh.

Another possible musical analogy is, perhaps unexpectedly, Haken. Early Haken, not fussy and clamorous The Mountain or glum and insipid Affinity, but magnificent Aquarius and intricate Visions. According to most of sources, Haken is 'heavy prog' while Lifesigns is 'neo- prog', but Martin Orford hates the term 'neo-prog' not without reason. Sometimes strict definitions produce confusions, and there's no reason to pay too much attention to tags. I can find a number of musical parallels between N and, exempli gratia, The Point Of No Return (the opening track from Aquarius) in melody making and arrangement techniques.

But with the track two, Voice In My Head, any hints of Galadriel and Haken disappear, and - quel passage! - we hear another Telephone. Do you remember? It's the second track of the previous (self-titled) album from Lifesigns. Now, four years later, the band exploits the same structure: track one is epic, long and complex, while track two has simple melody and simple rhythm and sounds almost dance-like. Okay, okay. The next track, Chasing Rainbows, is an excellent short song in the vein of Pendragon, Jadis or IQ... and then - quelle surprise! - the third Telephone begins! Hey guys, maybe enough? (Just to be clear: I do like Telephone. I like it very much, it's one of my faves from the band's debut!) But no, far from enough, the next track is again a reincarnation of Telephone! And only the closing track, Cardington, restores the initial atmosphere, it's a long epic suite with a lot of innovative moments, and the shade of Calibrated Collision Course is again here.

So, the album includes two amazing, absolutely incomparable epics, one beautiful short song and four Telephones. That's why I am so base and spiteful to give it only four stars. Otherwise, if the entire album was sustained at the level of its opening and closing track, even a five-star rating would be too low for it.