FÖLD ÉS ÉG

You know how you used to dance when you were really little? All twiddling fingers and wiggling toes? Well for about half of this album you will be transported back to that inner child and have no more ability to prevent yourself from dancing like that again than would a puppet with a particularly jovial master. The keyboard and piano solo sections (of which there are many) of this album are simply that good, that pretty, that twiddly, and that upflifting. I guarantee you will smile when you here them, the full Keith Emerson style works are going on, and it makes for a very enjoyable listening experience.

What is odd, though, is that most of the rest of the time we are treated to a gorgeous, sonorous interplay of synthesisers, strings, choir voices and a considerately interwoven guitar, that creates an atmosphere half-melancholy and half calm and comfortable. And, among these, we are even treated to some spoken word passages laden with emotional depth.

And yet, depite this odd variation of atmospheres, the album really works as a collective whole. Somehow, if you aren't caring to look for the breaks between tracks, they blend and flow seamlessly into one another, creating a piece that really functions as a collective whole.

My only regret, really, with this work is that I do not speak a word of Hungarian, especially in the spoken word sections, in which I cannot help but feel I am missing a story of great significance. It has the feeling of some epic fable being related, and it saddens me not to be a part of it.

Overall, a very worthy 4/5.