BURIED ALONE - TALES OF CRUSHING DEFEAT

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Buried Alone: Tales Of Crushing Defeat is certainly one of my more interesting musical discoveries for 2009. I've recently run into a few new artists with male and female duet vocals: Phideaux, Pure Reason Revolution, The Reasoning, and will have to add Kavus Torabi's Knifeworld to the list of really good newer progressive artists in this vein.

The big names will always grab the attention but don't let the lesser knowns pass you by. What we have here is to a big extent a Torabi solo project, with Kavus on most of the instruments and playing a major vocal role, but the supporting musicians really bring the album all together, especially the extra vocalists and Kyam Allami's drum work. In addition to the extra vocalists, there's wind instrumentation including recorder, saxophone, clarinet, flute by Sarah Measures. As I write a few notes about these musicians, I realize I really don't know anything much about them, but I hope to hear more from them in the future. This is my first encounter with any of them and I'm really enjoying what I'm hearing.

As to describing the music, there's a lot of variety and only bits that I can relate to some of the great progressive music of days of old. I don't see them as being overly imitative of the great stuff that was done in the past while not turning their back on it. It's a nicely balanced mixture of heavy, the less heavy, and the occasional light moments, but overall there's a wonderful intensity to it all. Mid period Gentle Giant and Kayak come to mind. For Kayak particularly the frenetic style used for the song Pissed Up On Brake Fluid. For Gentle Giant, it's definitely in the wind instruments, but also in the complexity of the music (not to say that Kayak couldn't get complex). The lyrics are by and large bleak when you read them to the music. The album comes across as more upbeat if you listen to it first without doing that. My favorite song is the ending piece Me To The Future Of You. You get some really moving duet vocals, it has a good length to it and wraps up the album nicely.

I'd also like to put in a kind word for putting this album out in a nicely designed cardboard sleeve with a lyric booklet. I hate "jewel" cases.