LIBER DE DICTIS

Those who are familiar with the multi-national recording project THE SAMURAI OF PROG, are hopefully also aware of this related project, which is more oriented to Folk and Old Music elements, albeit always staying within modernly produced progressive rock. Liber de Dictis is the follower to the warmly received debut album The Knight and the Ghost (2020). The core line-up has changed for the main keyboards: Ton Scherpenzeel (Kayak) has been replaced by Alessandro di Benedetti, who contributed on one track on the debut. As always, the guest musicians are very numerous, but unlike with TSOP where the various collaborators usually also write the music, The Guildmaster is more self-contained in this matter, Rafael Pacha being the most prolific composer. This 68-minute album is loosely conceptual: each track draws inspiration from folkloristic sayings.

The album begins with two Pacha instrumentals. Perhaps Rafael Pacha can be seen as the project's artistic heart with his wide selection of instruments both old and new (if the Finnish drummer Kimmo Pörsti is the primary producer together with bassist Marco Bernard). 'A lo hecho, pecho' starts with Old Music nuances and grows -- within its surprisingly limited space -- into contemporary prog with the soaring, Hackett-like electric guitar work. The other piece sounds at first even more rooted in Old Music (featuring e.g. viola da gamba and virginal) but that gives way to keyboard-emphasized progressive rock.

The Italian Marco Grieco (a.k.a. Macromarco in the ProgArchives) wrote and plays all keyboards on 'Agora', inspired by the Greek culture. Evangelia Kozoni singing in English has a nice, clean voice. The third Pacha instrumental 'Manos frías, corazón caliente' features recorder and accordion [midi]. Especially I like the serene, acoustic section amidst more rhythmic prog rock. My favourite piece is definitely 'Suruista tehty soitto' in which Kimmo Pörsti's composition emulates melancholic Finnish folk music. Pacha's zyther sounds very much like kantele, the national instrument of Finland. The Finnish lyrics are beautifully sung by Paula Pörsti.

Recorders are pretty central in keyboardist Jose Manuel Medina's instrumental piece 'Agua pasada no mueve molino', at least before the modern prog complexity takes over and Pacha switches to electric guitar. The seventh track, inspired by the myth of Orpheus where "music calms the beast", is composed by Pacha and sung in English by Alessandro di Benedetti. The other song from the pen of Marco Grieco, 'Nea Polis', is "located" in Naples. The slightly rough and shouty vocals -- in Neapolitan Italian -- underline the strong RPI flavour, often present on The Samurai Of Prog albums. Some Spanish vibrancy is felt on the 10th track sung (in Spanish) by Carlos Espejo.

The spring-inspired Pacha instrumental (9.) sort of represents in a nutshell the two-faced essence of The Guildmaster: the delightful Medieval/Renaissance atmosphere created by Old Music instruments becomes more or less secondary to the modern prog production. This can be seen as the project's Achilles heel: the whole album tends to mix Old and New constantly, sadly not letting the organic folk side truly dominate a single piece. In this sense the album is perhaps slightly overproduced. That said, the final major track 'Young Me, Old You' (by Alessandro di Benedetti) is an excellent prog song full of introspective serenity, graced by the emotional vocals of Daniel Fäldt. The peaceful closing track is an acoustic guitar reprise of the Pörsti composition. In the end I prefer this album over the debut.