HEROES OF THE PAST

Another year, and another Soniq Theater album. It is incredible to think that Alfred manages to keep producing albums at such a rate, as this is his fourteenth in fourteen years, with everything played by the man himself. He has revisited his archives again for this one, and two of the twelve numbers were actually recorded back in 1987. Yet again we can hear Wakeman influences here, combined with Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre. There isn't so much Emerson in this album, which generally has a lighter feel, but again it is music that one can get inside quite easily and there is almost some new Age in some of the sounds. It is refreshing, easy to listen to without ever becoming easy listening and it is interesting to hear the difference in the older song "Lemuria" against the rest as it contains a darkness and emotion that is often missing from his more recent works.

I have been fortunate enough to hear all of Alfred's works and this is yet another worthy addition to his catalogue. Find out more about the man and his albums by visiting www.soniqtheater.de and if you enjoy keyboard music, especially influenced by J-M Jarre, then you are in for a treat.

I found out, listening all Soniq Theater's albums that Alfred Mueller, the man behind the project, is a very skillfull player, and his productions are quite good if you take into account that he does everything by himself and everything in his home studio.

The problem is that his music is always ok, it lacks excitment, it lacks great compositions and it lacks unity. Very often he throws himself in all kinds of genres like Prog Rock, Electronic Prog, Electronic, New Age.... Not to mention that if you listen one of his albums the others will be pretty much the same.

Not to mention the CD-R artwork of his CDs that are really poor.

Good, but not essential.

The studio project SONIQ THEATER is the long ongoing project of German composer and keyboardist Alfred Mueller. He's in the habit of releasing one new album each January, "Heroes of the Past" is his fourteenth production and dates back to 2014.

The music of Soniq Theater isn't one that will have a broad, universal appeal, as the limitations of using keyboards only to create a full, rich rock expression results in some odd-sounding emulated instruments. His compositions are well made however, and if you are able to mentally fill out the gaps of his atmospheric instrumental compositions and you suspect you'll enjoy an artist existing on the border between symphonic progressive and e-music that might also be described as new age, the music of Soniq Theater is available for free on his homepage.