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Darius - Somewhere Alive In The Crowd  CD (album) cover

SOMEWHERE ALIVE IN THE CROWD

Darius

 

Neo-Prog

4.05 | 3 ratings

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Gatot
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
4 stars MARILLION freaks, watch-out this band!

Oh ..how come I have always forgotten to key my words at my laptop commenting about this excellent live set? Too many CDs that I want to review and I want to review each of them with the right emotion stage, i.e. after re-spinning the CD again. And the reason for me to re-spin this CD last night was due to some short messages floating around my cellular phone preaching Marillion "Misplaced Childhood" and "Script For a Jester's Tear". One of the senders telling me that he listened to Misplaced while writing a review for this site - and now you can see his excellent review posted today by Purwanto Setiadi - my everyday prog mate. It struck my head about the beauty of Darius "Voices from the Crowd" album which I reviewed sometime ago. And this is the live performance version of that album plus previous album and beautiful cover of Marillion's Kayleigh.

If you love FISH-era MARILLION, you should have "Voices from the Crowd" studio album first before you can fully enjoy this live set. But it's OK if you don't have it because this live set still have the beauty of studio version. Darius music is not exactly like Fish-era Marillion. Their music is much more straight forward, energetic and melodic - blending the 70s nuance of symphonic prog with a kind of hard rock music. You will not find any guitar sound very similar to Hackett (of GENESIS) or Rothery (of MARILLION) even though you may find it in some guitar fills during transition segments. The guitar style is like a typical hard rock band, but the riffs produced are really nice. You may notice the singer, Dirk Bovensiepen, sounds like Fish but it's not really similar. His voice is excellent and powerful and has become the pivotal element of the band. The other important thing to notice is that the band has an excellent drummer Markus Arnrich.

This live album is a compilation of various performances the band took in various places (Utrecht, Uden, Wukfrath) from 1995 - 1998. There is nothing I can find as a bad track or bad performance in this live album - all of them are excellent. All tracks are my favorites and all of them are able to stir my emotion - it's so uplifting. But my most favorite in this live set is the fifth track: "The Last Way". The reason for this is because the song is much better performed here with dynamic live ambience and some improvised melodies as compared to the studio version from their album "A Poet's Soliloquy". Oh man . whenever I reach this track, I always repeat at least two times! It's so rocking and the tempo changes are wonderful. Great composition and great delivery.

The performance starts with an ambient sound to welcome the opening track "Voices" augmented with inventive and powerful drum works. It is a very nice, relatively medium tempo, kind of rock music The melody is simple and relatively easy to emulate and the drum sound is awesome man! The second track "First Contact" is opened by electric guitar solo, typical to any hard rock music, but the melody is really terrific. The vocal enters smoothly "The sin of an eternal soul / Finding the graves in the snow / Lost everything in life father brother and many friends .." followed by guitar sound. In the middle of the track there is Marillion's "At That Time of The Night"-like keyboard / clavinet sounds, followed by a simple bass guitar play. It's wonderful! I used to repeat this track over and over due to this nice piece."Searching" is a song with some pop touch with strong melody. The music flows nicely. "Alone" is really a mellow track with a powerful singing style and some sound effects to create an accentuation of the story. Nice guitar fills and piano. The melody is strong. This is the kind of melody that people would like to emulate and sing (or yell?). For example when Dirk sings "Why did you run away .?" with a piece of guitar riffs. Unfortunately this track ends up with a manual fading out style at recording studio. It's a regret actually.

"Snowflakes" has a similarity in structure and tempo as "Searching" but with totally different singing style and guitar work. It has a Dirk's introduction that this track is dedicated to his dad who passed away in 1994. Excellent song. "The Seven Signs (5:33)" and "One Of Them(6:28)" are all great tracks. "The Seven Signs" is an uplifting track with dominant bass playing, very nice and stimulating interlude. "I dream of a dancing girl ." yeah ." . crossing the line" followed by solo keyboard and then enters the interlude part where guitar and keyboard sound make up a wonderful (yet simple) melody .and the track finishes brilliantly. Followed then by a guitar sound as an intro of last track "One of Them". Excellent. "I am heading home tonight ." sings Dirk. This album also features a beautiful unplugged live version of Marillion's "Kayleigh" with great piano and acoustic guitar. The combination of vocal, piano and acoustic guitar is really good. It's really cool, especially when it reaches the interlude part . oh my friend .. it's nggeblak-able! (stunned, and having a paralyzed mind for a while due to ultimate satisfaction with the musical composition). The concluding track "A Poet's Soliloquy" is another great track and performed better in this live unplugged version compared to studio version.

Overall, this album is a must for those who love early Marillion. It's an excellent addition to any prog music collection. Keep Marillionizing man .!

Progressively yours, GW

Gatot | 4/5 |

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