FOR THE LIGHT

This album is made by different members of Russian prog bands and the band's name come from the 2 main composers, keyboard player Ivan Rozmainsky and guitar player Vladimir Mikhaylov. The eclectic style of the music makes this album something intriguing. When you think the band is delivering some beautiful and simple melodies, it can switch to something darker with more discordant parts. Those who enjoy avant-garde music will be familiar with this kind of music. The music seems to start from improvised jams but instead of extending this jams into long instrumental parts, the music cut short with songs that are short in duration. The overall atmosphere is quite enjoyable and is not heavy but more into the symphonic style with songs that have some melodies developed in a rather slow pace most of the times. The addition of the clarinet to the keyboards and the guitar give more textures to the overall sound. This is an album that requires some concentration and time to enjoy because of the nature of the music who is adventurous and because the musicians don't try to impress their audience with big guitar solos, but instead rely on subtle arrangements and by putting you in an atmosphere where light meets dark.

Like in classic prog albums, there's a central recurring theme which opens and closes what I think can be considered a single instrumental suite, despite being divided into short tracks. There's a lot of Roz Vitalis (Rozmainsky) in the sound, in particular that touch of avant showing some Pink Floyd influence. But also the soundscapes of Enine are present in the guitar playing of Mikhaylov. In particular the subtle melanchloy which permeates the album has a feeling similar to the Enin's "Nosferatu" suite.

I have noticed, if I'm not wrong, that the main theme returns in all the tracks whose title contains the word "light", maybe just a coincidence but only the authors could tell.

The production is very clean, like in all the Roz Vitalis albums.

Said so, the music is great. Melancholic prog of this kind seems to be now a sort of standard in the St.Petersburg area. Bands like Yojo come to mind, and the clarinet which is fundamental in this album sets exactly that mood.

A mention is deserved by the closure track, the only one scoring over 10 minutes in which a chirch organ takes the lead. It comes from a dark Crimsonian intro through a rocking first, then a newagey part until the organ brings it to the closure on the original theme.

Probably it's only my impression, but I think I've heard echoes of Stravinskij here and there, other than a very clear influence of King Crimson.

A complex album, already extremely good and also very promising. It will be very interesting see what happens in case the band goes ahead with follow-ups.

4 solid stars for another jewel coming from near the Ladogan Lake.

What we have here, in effect, is a Russian supergroup featuring musicians from various prog and prog-related Russian bands including Yojo, Algabas, Enine, Roz Vitalis, KGB etc. Apparently, the fundamental goal of the band and its debut album is to open new musical worlds that cannot be analysed in the rational manner. The applied goal of the band and its debut album is to reveal how to protect peace of mind in the conditions of troubles and stress. So there you go. I have always been a huge fan of Ivan Rozmainsky and Roz Vitalis, so when I was offered the opportunity to hear this I jumped at the chance, and I wasn't disappointed.

Russian bands continue to excite me, as they are producing some of the most interesting music to be coming through the progressive rock scene. Their reference points are quite different to most Western bands, and often it is only King Crimson that could be see to be an influences, and that is again the case here. There is a mix of progressive rock, with an almost classical approach. There is stacks of space within the music so much so that it is almost like another instrument, pushing apart the layers and making its presence felt. The music is often delicate, but also clearly defined, with an almost staccato approach that makes it feel striong and empowered. The avant garde collides with the melodic, to create an album that is constantly inspiring, constantly evolving, and thoroughly enjoyable. This is well worth hearing for any proghead

The debut album from 'Rozmainsky & Mikhaylov Project' is very similar to their live album 'Adventures at the Babooinumfest 2017', which is to be expected, given the improvisational approach to songwriting used here. That said, I can quite easily say that I do like this more, as I find there to be less meandering that could occasionally be found from time to time on 'Adventures...'. Furthermore, I appreciate the more varied tone that the songs have, having both slightly dark sounding tracks full of cyclical rhythms, and much dreamier, relaxing pieces, all with a strong overtone of psychedelia woven through in a way reminiscent of Pink Floyd and King Crimson while still maintaining a fairly distinct sound. I also like the way different elements are introduced throughout the first few tracks in order to gradually introduce the listener to the larger scope of the album than what it may first seem.

The first 3 tracks show this perfectly, with 'Wounded by the Lack of Light' being predominantly guitar focused, while 'Keep No Thou Silence' contains elements such as a piano, along with a much greater focus on synths and keyboards. 'A Dedication To The Floydian Sun' then further introduces elements by having a large focus on the clarinet and bass clarinet. After this, 'Create in Me A Clean Heart' combines these elements and then draws attention to the rhythm, with a near hypnotic beat. I also really enjoy the neoclassical edge the song has to it with the keyboard mimicking the sound of a harpsichord. While another reviewer already mentioned this, I do really like the touch of every song including the word "light" having this melodic motif, which gives the album a nice bit of character. While this is cool, I find the songs themselves to be a bit lacking, without anything other than the reprises to be particularly memorable. 'Delivered from the Snare of the Fowler' on the other hand manages to start straight off with a great fade in intro with one of the better guitar sections on the album, before morphing into more abstract music with a lot more focus on atmosphere. I enjoy this version of 'Coming of the Troubled Waters' a lot more than the version on 'Adventures...', with the section where there is very little instrumentation other than the keyboard to sound marvellous, with the way it slowly builds to include more rhythmic interplay while still ending it on a very pretty note to be great. Similarly to this, I really loved the various transitions in 'A Flower in the Smoke'. The album ends nicely with the long 'For the Light', with a darker sound very similar to what one could find in one of Kind Crimson's improvisational tracks before developing into a highly entertaining groove. This is easily my favourite track for the energy and the amount of ground it covers, all while still sounding perfectly enjoyable.

Overall, I do prefer this album to the live one by the same band, with a great deal of it being due to how much tighter written it is, with less extended jams that didn't feel as if they were going anywhere with them. I definitely found this album enjoyable, taking the often abstract nature of this particular kind of music, and giving it a lot of atmosphere along with never making it anything extremely challenging to listen to, instead being quite pleasant. Despite there being a couple of slight dips in quality, I also can comfortably say that there wasn't anything that I considered low quality on here, making it a consistently enjoyable album that I'd highly recommend.

Best songs: Create in Me a Clean Heart, Coming of the Troubled Waters, For The Light

Weakest songs: The Thing in the Light

Verdict: Despite the improvised jam style that the band seems to take on, the music is rather pleasant to listen to, without too much of anything to seriously challenge the listener, unless they aren't too keen on purely instrumental albums. Despite this, it is a highly enjoyable album that I highly recommend is listened to.

The debut album by the new Rozmainsky & Mikhaylov Project (better abbreviated as RMP) makes no secret of its band members' admiration for classic Pink Floyd. One of the better tracks is even titled "A Dedication to the Floydian Sun", on which the guitar of Vladimir Mikhaylov (the 'M' of the R&M Project) references the slow bass ostinato made famous by Roger Waters when he Set his Controls for the Heart of the same local star.

It's a promising first effort by veteran musicians perhaps still learning how to coordinate their skills within a new group. When it works, the album soars: in the lilting "Keep No Thou Silence" (all the track titles are pure poetry), and throughout the atmospheric "Floydian Sun" tribute. But some otherwise good music is sadly undermined by the occasional plodding tempo, keeping the album earthbound when it should be gliding weightless toward the empyrean ideal named in the title track and elsewhere ("For the Light"; "Wounded By the Lack of Light'; so forth).

You can hear that divide in the album's first notes, when the ghostly prologue suddenly collides headlong into a clumsy backbeat. That initial haunting refrain reappears in various forms across the album's 48-minutes, providing welcome thematic continuity on a more or less instrumental collection: the only vocals are some lovely wordless singing by Anastasia Mikhaylova.

The keyboards and guitar of R and M are dominant, of course. But several effective secret weapons are hidden in the band's arsenal: the sultry bass clarinet of Leonid Perevalov (ex-Yojo, which I hope doesn't mean that excellent band is now defunct), and the occasional gusli, an evocative Slavic zither played by guest star Natalia Fyodorova.

According to their lofty mission statement: "The fundamental goal of the band and its debut album is to open new musical worlds that cannot be analyzed in the rational manner." Which immediately excludes my own petty efforts to do exactly that, so I'll quit here.

But I have to applaud the band's musical idealism, and hope they continue striving to reach those irrational other worlds. Even when, as suggested by their first recorded attempt, the goal is just beyond their reach.