PANTERRANIA

Usually I would review an album soon after it is released while it is fresh in my mind but this double disc album has a lot to absorb and I wanted time to clarify my initial thoughts when I first heard it. These thoughts were that I was hearing the best Karibow album so far. I listened to this a few times and then gave it a break for quite a few weeks and now I wanted to see if my thoughts were still valid. Is this the best Karibow album? I will reveal this at the end. The first disc is titled 'Worlds of Illusion' and it contains 9 tracks running at 56 minutes. The second disc is titled 'The Last Illusian' and no that is not a spelling mistake. This runs at 51 minutes and in essence is one song broken into 10 parts.

The first track PanTerrania acts like an intro with a Middle East feel which merges into the following song 'Simplify Yourself'. Beginning with guitar that is reminiscent of 'Run Like Hell' by Pink Floyd. A magnetic hook embraces you and coerces your mouth to sing the chorus when it begins. This song truly sets the tone for the whole album and make no mistake, there is no lull following.

'Ordinary Gods' follows and deserves the description of 'epic'. It wouldn't less with 'God' in the title. This 10 minute long song exemplifies Oliver's style with hills and valleys, an amalgamation of music smoothly sewn together seamlessly. I believe I counted three guitar solos in this song alone. In my opinion the guitarist that creates the best melodious guitar solos is Michael Schenker (UFO & MSG). Oliver's solos are up there and each one is woven magic and stands apart. They are like songs within songs.

The other aspect Oliver creates is different levels of depth. You can listen to the surface and enjoy this road or you can listen with more depth hearing the underpinning expression of piano, organ, lyre or bass bubble up that exposes the creative intelligence of Oliver's composing. It is this kind of music making that is a magnet to those of us that admire layers and draw us into hopefully hearing something we haven't heard before.

I'm also propelled to mention Oliver's singing. If there was a room full of 100 singers and they all sang at the same time and I was blindfolded, I'm sure I could find Oliver without problem. His voice is soulful and passion exudes successfully in communicating his story. I'm not really into lyrics, I prefer the music to take me but when I do take notice of his words I can hear his phrasing with meaning and experience that direct the story and mood. I shall also mention Oliver's drumming. How many multi-instrumentalists do you know that also plays the drums? He delivers exciting drum fills and even the general rhythm is inventive that gives that other level of depth I earlier spoke of.

I need to speak of the guest musicians on this album also. Ian Crichton of Saga fame plays a stunning guitar solo on the song 'Genes From Another World', Andy Tillison (The Tangent) offers his keyboard skills and Monique Van Der Kolk gives lovely vocal performances on 'Illusian' and 'Nothing Shall Remain'. I haven't specified many of the individual songs here mainly because they are all very high quality and it is hard to separate them from each other. Yes you have your heavy songs, your ballads and epics however they are all multi dimensional.

Now I have come to the end of the review and after much thought and listening I have come to the conclusion that this is the best Karibow album to date. The creation of such a long album of high quality is not lost on me and wouldn't be to any other listener who listens to music of many depths.

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