SEEDS OF THE DREAM

Theta is a japanese band from late'90s who release so far a single album in 2000 named Seeds of a dream. The band was formed around female vocalist and flautis from defunct Vermilion Sands (another band made in Japan, from late '80's) - Yoko Royama. The music Theta playes and offers here is symphonic prog , more the mellow side not far from Cinema (State of Flux era), Outer Limits in places and even some Teru's Symphonia moments, well not bad for sure, each of this influences are shown in this album in less or big quantity, but the result is a pleasent one for me. The similarity with Renaissance seams to me a little forced, ok Yoko was a big fan of this band and did some cover versions in his career, but the music of Theta and his voice are to me kinda far from this golden english band. The symphonic arrangements goes very well with the flute and violin parts and gives a pleasent atmosphere, in the end tipicaly , at least for me for a japanese band from this times, Cinema is the first to come in mind when I talked about Theta. The complexity of the music is moderate, some jazzy interplays on first track Footprints are shown, but very k, The toy airplane has some AOR feel to it but combined with progressive rock is realy pleasent, I think the best track from here, the rest are ok. Keyboards, bass, drums and guitars make a good job here, leaving the listner with a pleasent taste in the end. So, Seeds of the dream i a good album for sure, but nothing close to an essential listning, desearve 3 stars, but nothing more, but no less either. Sadly, because of her illness Yoko Royama passed away in sommer of 2004, a great loss for japanese music in general and specially for progressive music in particular. While they released only one album, Theta is one of the examples of japanese music where finess and complexity goes hand in hand.