THE WORM OUROBOROS

This is sophisticated and classy with the concert flute and overall sound so when they go deep, powerful or avant man it stands out and is such a contrast. This album had my full attention all last week, very intrigued with this one especially that Zeuhl inspired stuff like they had on the debut, and it's those Zeuhl sections where the vocals appear. Just so well done bringing ESKATON to mind. And while not everything here is in my wheelhouse I just can't help but be impressed. And how about that album cover! Come on I just am so into it and the whole package of this 2019 recording. I like how they give a quote from The Truman Show to end the liner notes saying "And in case we don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!".

I have a top three but this is a very consistent album which I live for. I was actually surprised when I came on the site here and saw this record is 74 minutes long. They list the tracks on the cd but not times. And the time always flew by. The opener "Cycles" is over 14 minutes long and the longest. What a way to start and it starts slow with acoustic guitar, flute and atmosphere. Beautiful as the organ joins in before the tempo picks up with drums. Pleasant stuff then a change as bass and piano lead the way. More of a rock mode before 7 minutes with the guitar and flute soloing over top. Love that bass 8 minutes in followed by some Canterbury organ. Yes! That distorted organ bringing that Canterbury sound will show up on and off throughout this album. Mellotron 10 minutes in and it turns dark. Amazing! Check out the guitar before 12 minutes.

Quite the ride. But then so is my next top three "The Reality You Can't Stop Dreaming" at almost 13 1/2 minutes. Bassoon to start. What? Drums and piano join in followed by bass and it all sounds so good. The tempo picks up as the guitar arrives then it turns avant. Mellotron and a calm 5 minutes in along with bassoon then it builds. Chunky bass here as they seem to jam. The final top three is "The Whistler Shrill" at 8 minutes. Flute to start and it's melancholic before acoustic guitar and bassoon join in. It kicks in pretty hard around 3 minutes and the tempo picks up a minute after that with the guitar and piano leading the way. The bass is huge here then flute joins in before the Zeuhl vocals and sound take over at 5 1/2 minutes. Come on! There is another Zeuhl appearance late on the track called "Ascension" the only other place we have vocals. The weakest tune for me is "Muralidaran" but I have to mention that Canterbury vibe on "Quest Of The Kingfisher" another top track with some darkness in it. The closer has samples of waves to open and close it and is well done.

Congrats to the band for such a beautiful album and I love that this is a band who have their own sound. This is clear now after two studio records. Highly recommended.

The Worm Ouroboros is a good example of what an eclectic progressive rock band is all about, and documents that a band can create challenging and demanding music without relying on avant, experimental or abrasive effects to emphasize the challenging aspects of the material. An album that, in essence, is a production that should be considered something of an essential purchase for those who love their Camel and their Magma in equal measures.

It is unusual for bands to have such self-deprecating humour, and needless to say that endeared them to me, but I was even more impressed by the album itself. Any band who is confident enough to commence proceedings with an instrumental which is more than fourteen minutes in length are likely to produce something of import, and that is indeed what has happened here. They have obviously been majorly influenced by the likes of Caravan and the Canterbury scene, Camel, Zeuhl and Magma, and have taken a mellow approach to proceedings. There are times when it is fairly upbeat and others where it is more delicate and thoughtful (they describe it themselves as 'inconsolable lugubriousness'). It is a mostly instrumental album, and when they do wake up the guitars as on 'Clouds To Owings Mills' it is quite a shock to the system!

I have been fortunate enough to hear some amazing bands from Eastern Europe over the last 30 years or so, and for me The Worm Ouroborus are right up there with the best of them. Although this comes across as a long-lost Seventies British progressive rock album, it really is a modern piece of work which came out on Christmas Eve 2019, and is truly deserving of investigation by any self-respecting proghead.

Flute is occasionally well present also in the next track which has more muscle so to speak. I agree with a previous review that the guitar part may remind the listener of Robert Fripp and the Crimso classic 'Starless', again without tasting like imitation. 'Stone and Lydia' has a simple synth intro (is it perhaps some old Saga song I'm thinking of?) leading the way to eclectic instrumental prog with rhythmic complexity. The electric piano nicely underlines the retro feeling. Despite all its sudden turns the piece never loses its focus. The very classic organ sound (think of Soft Machine's Third, for example) is central on many moments in 'Quest of the Kingfisher'. The composition has a strong sense of a heroic adventure.

Before I end up trying to describe each piece... I'm really fond of the way this wonderful band manages to make music that is both complex and joyfully fresh; a rare balance between surpriseful eclectism and a warm, happy, melodic atmosphere not very difficult for any prog listener to dive into. The band is basically a trio of two multi-instrumentalists and a drummer; of the guest appearances worth mentioning are especially the vibraphone (5, 6) and xylophone (8) parts of Alexandra Gankova, and Vitaly Appow's bassoon (7, 8). The 8th track, 'The Whistler Shrill', is the richest one when it comes to the arrangements. Like ART ZOYD but more accessible, just like octopus-4 says in his review. The only other track to contain any vocals is 'Ascension' in which the falsetto voice operates somewhere between Kobaia and Canterbury (Robert Wyatt!). This excellently executed album deserves 4½ stars from me, and it's a very tough choice which direction I should round it up. I firmly believe this is something one doesn't easily get bored with on repeated listenings -- there's so much going on -- but maybe my enjoyment mostly stays on the level of "wow, that's great" instead of "oh my goodness, how I love this music!", hence I'm rounding it down. A strong recommendation!

Also "Clouds to Owings Mills" travels on this kind of soundscape, with odd signatures, a jazzy mood and a guitar which may bring Andy Latimer to mind. So is it a Camel clone? Absolutely not. Even though the influence is evident, also in the skillful drumming of Mikhail Kilchin, there's much more to come in the following tracks. And, believe me, the first two tracks are already a good reason to have this album. This second track is closed by a guitar part reminding of Fripp and Starless.

"Stone and Lydia" is harder to compare. It's another instrumental showing the full belonging of the band to the prog world. On this one I like in particular the passage from slow to uptime through an organ chord sounding like a Hammond. During the 8 minutes of this track a lot is going on. There's an excelent bass base behind a flute part, I can't say if there's more Camel or more King Crimson or...well, there's a lot of Worm Ourobouros. This is the band and this is up to now the best album I've listened to in 2020.

"Quest of the Kingfisher" shows also the influence from classical music. I'm not an expert, it brings Stravinskij and Mussorvskij to my mind, but in 5/4. The more I listen to this album, the more I like it.

"Mulidaran" starts with drums and flute, it sounds between far eastern music and Claude Debussy, then becomes jazzy: bass, keys, drums and the usual flute. There's also a bass solo, very interesting because of the use of chorus and distortion on it (at least those seems the effects used to my ears).

Proceeding, the album becomes a little darker, and "Ascension" is the first real surprise: a Crimsonian start which falls unespectedly into Zeuhl in perfect Magma style. Another great track with solid arrangement, unusual signatures and skillful playing with a bolero interlude, and all this stuff in few more than 5 minutes. This is also the first track with vocals. It sounds Kobaian.

An intriguing tiitle track: "The reality you can't stop dreaming". Like the previous track it has various signature changes and a dark Zeuhl atmosphere. 3 minutes full of rhythm, a sudden stop and...flute, which seems inspired to Jimmy Hastings and Caravan this time. But this is a sort of epic which in its 13 minutes of duration offers a number of different situations. Not easy to classify, it's a kind of "the dark side of early Camel" if something like this makes sense. I can compare the structure of this track to "Lady Fantasy", but it goes through totally different ways.

"The Whistler Shrill" starts with a chamber opening that has also something medieval or even celtic inside, but still very dark. Like Art Zoyd, but more "accessible". When the vocals arrive we are again in the Magma realm. It's another complex track which has also very melodic parts.

The closer is the simplest track in terms of technicalities. The gaelic title should mean something like "grown beard" (thanks to google). Its meody is so captivating that when it end makes me wishing to restart the album from the beginning.

Before the end, I must spend some words for the three guests, in particular Alexandra Gankova whose xylopone and vibraphone add a lot to the tracks.

I'm entusiastic of this album. It's March 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, and up to now this is the best album I've listened to this year.

My first 5 stars album of the year

The old saying that real musicians have day jobs is still quite relevant well into the 21st century and such is the case with these prog stalwarts who do whatever they do all day and only have time to craft their musical visions in their spare time. Add to that the perfectionist streak that keeps musicians continuously re-recording until they "get it right" and it has taken six long years for THE WORM OUROBOROS to deliver a satisfactory followup sophomore album titled ENDLESS WAY FROM YOU. Add to that, the band's previous label, AltrOck ceased to exist and other annoying delays kept the project at bay for what seems like an eternity in the prog world as years slip into the great cosmic history books. However all is good and i'm happy to report that THE WORM OUROBOROS has delivered a satisfying stellar slab of modern prog based in the retro traditions and captures the essence of its previous album without sounding like a mere retread.

ENDLESS WAY FROM YOU is a rich sounding album with many instruments providing the tones and timbres of a classic prog rock sound. In addition to Gvozdyukevich's swirling synth swirls, bass and guitar heft, Sobolevsky's accompanying playing on the same instruments and Mikhail Kinchin's jazzy drum rolls, this album features Vitaly Appow on bassoon, Alioina Sukilyan on oboe and Alexandra Gankova on vibraphone, xylophone and timpani. The album consists of nine tracks and is just shy of the 80 minute mark which makes this a lengthy listening session with two of the tracks stretching past the 13 minute mark. The length of the album is a result of the intention of two albums that have been merged into one. The first was supposed to be a more uplifting positive vibe style of album and the other a darker bleak sounding one. The squirmy WORMS kept this album in that theme with the lighter side appearing first and the darker as the second half.

The opening track "Cycles" is composed of four segments that correspond to the daily cycles of morning / day / evening / night as well as the cyclical nature of nature. The other lengthy track "The Reality You Can't Stop Dreaming" is on the darker side and simulates the changing scenery of dreams and nightmares, the latter of which is discovered to be true after waking up. The track was inspired by horror and giallo movie composers such as Fabio Frizzi and Ennio Morricone. There is a recurring bird theme as well such as on "Quest of the Kingfisher" and "The Whistler Shrill." The band also was helped by members of Rational Diet (now Five-Storey Ensemble) to record the woodwind parts. While other tracks are shorter, many are nearer the eight minute mark. "Stone And Lydia" as well as the birdie songs all generate a series of passages through proggy instrumental workouts with clever compositional workouts that exude a classic 70s sound.

Overall this second edition of THE WORM OUROBOROS canon is a much mellower affair with less emphasis on heavier rock aspects and if you ask me this one reminds me most of classic Camel as it's light and airy with an extra helping of retro keyboard sounds. The mostly instrumental processions also add to that feeling of albums like "The Snow Goose" coming to mind. The woodwind parts instill a folky vibe to the mix but there are still plenty of guitar and bass sounds to anchor this within the greater prog universe, it's just that they play a subordinate rhythmic role in relation to the more active winds and keys. This is an excellent second coming from this fine Belarusian band from Minsk. While the playing time may be a little too long for a single listening session, there are no disappointing tracks to be heard however there is less variation on this album than the debut and tracks begin to sound quite similar. While i still feel this band hasn't latched onto a true distinguishing sound and reached its full potential, there is no doubt that ENDLESS WAY FROM YOU is a beautiful prog release that will particularly thrill any retro prog lovers who dig classic keyboard sounds.

It all begins with 'Cycles' (14:16), a track that starts with a soft and pastoral sound which consists of nice woodwinds, acoustic guitars, organ and eventually a straitforward beat. The music reminds me of the softer Camel vibe, music that takes its time to move gracefully along, establishing melodies and themes, changing tempo occasionally to further develop the track, but remaining somewhat plush even when it builds the theme and intensifying as it goes. The flute seems to be the main instrument here supported mostly by acoustic guitar with some electric guitar and organ solos throughout. The last 4 minutes gets quite a bit more intense and dark as tension builds and releases with repeated piano notes that take it to its conclusion.

The different styles that make this music eclectic is more apparent in the next track 'Clouds to Owings Mills' (7:27) which begins with a piano led section that borrows from the Canterbury sound with a nice mix of folk and fusion, and courses through the styles of symphonic and then heavier prog sounds, generating intensity as it goes only to release it all to a piano and flute again. The music is more distraught than the first track, taking less time to travel to different progressive realms including forays into Zeuhl territory, yet remaining instrumental throughout.

You know by this time, what you are getting into on this album, a nice eclectic blend of styles, mostly instrumental all the way through. One of the highlights is 'Quest of the Kingfisher' (7:15) which moves seamlessly from simple sounds to a long development section that effectively drives forward with a tense and dramatic section that eventually evolves and resolves into a nice lilting section that features an organ generating excitement as an electric guitar drives the music to its satisfying conclusion.

Another standout is 'The Reality You Can't Stop Dreaming' (13:20) that begins with a sinister sounding oboe that brings in a tense piano and solid bass that push it into a nice heavy, somewhat dissonant and restless sound, often building through tension, releasing it and then rebuilding it again. Interspersed with solid guitar passages and organ and piano flourishes, all of the players get fair time to thread this track through many different moods and textures. 'The Whistler Shrill' (8:03) is also an excellent pastiche of dissonant flutes and guitars that keep pulling pastoral sounds into dark and evil territory resolved by occasional vocal passages. No doubt images of 'Magma' might come to mind, especially when things turn darkly dramatic. This track is definitely an emotional masterpiece.

This one is a bit tough to assign a rating to, because there are sections and tracks that are outstanding, easily 5-star material, but there are more tracks that are lovely and a bit more wandering that take their time to move along, and there are times you might find your mind wandering off and your attention wavering a bit. However, through it all is evidence of excellent musicianship and, even though the band has seen a lot of line-up changes, the music is tight and well-performed. The standouts here are as I have mentioned before, 'Quest of the Kingfisher', 'The Reality You Can't Stop Dreaming' and especially the amazing 'The Whistler Shrill', and if all of the tracks were this immersive, then this would have easily been one of the best albums of the year. But, with a lot of time keeping in slow and easy development, there are too many parts of the album that are excellent, but don't quite engage the listeners as much as the 3 mentioned tracks. Either way, the album is still easily a 4 star affair and should be heard by those that love the sound of 'Camel' with big doses of the Canterbury sound and forays into the heavier sounds of other sub-genres. This is one of the better 4-star albums that just barely misses the 5 star mark.

This band is primarily led by the multi-instrumentalist Sergey Gvozdyukevich who handles keys, acoustic guitar, bass, flutes and vocal duties. He is joined by four other musicians including Vladimir Sobolevsky on electric and acoustic guitars, Alexey Zapolsky on bass, Eugene Zarkhin on drums and Vitaly Appow on reeds. The mixture of styles ranges from straight on heavy progressive rock to Canterbury jazz and zeuhl. The mixture of styles and influences is the biggest draw on this album as well as its weakest link. At a near hour playing length OF THINGS THAT NEVER WERE certainly does deliver the prog addict the proper dosage of prog hits at any given moment but unfortunately in the end fails to mix and meld all these disparate styles into the perfect concoction in the cauldron of creativity. Still though. THE WORM OUROBOROS have unleashed a highly enjoyable progressive rock album unto the world and since this is only the debut gives me great confidence that even better things are to come.

The album begins with the reed heavy "L'Impasse Sainte Bérégonee" which floods the listener with a plethora of arenas of the prog past including the plentiful Italian scene with its melodic cloud nine productions of Crimsonian guitar riffs mixed with subdued wind instrumentation choppily parading down time sig alley with pleasant melodies just bursting at the seams to get out. As "Shelieth" continues the progfest, it becomes more obvious that THE WORM OUROBOROS has a thing for classic prog that pay attention to the details of the classic kingdom that came before. The keys imitate mellotrons of the past, the guitars evoke the jazz-fusion greats of the past all the while mixing and melding slow sensual passages with more upbeat but never frenetic eclectic prog workouts.

While most tracks are instrumental some such as "The Pear-Shaped Man" offer a sensible sense of humor in the form of fairly decent vocal additions to a nicely executed time sig frenzy that incorporates acoustic and electric guitars with a keyboard extravaganza egged on by a bass and drum pubococcygeus exercise. While most of this album is based in a mellow and beautiful mix of guitar work that reminds me of King Crimson, quirkiness renowned in the Canturbury scene of the 70s and a nice healthy dose of symphonic prog elements, there are standout tracks that deviate from the norm such as "The Curfew" which are clearly Magma fueled and incorporate all the zeuhl elements which includes the all the wonderful rhythmic Kobaian feelings complete with that signature bass line and even some too-close-for-comfort Zander vocal workouts.

As for time immemorial mimicry, many acts come and go only pathetically attempting to evoke those far away places in the fantasy world of the 70s with only marginal results. THE WORM OUROBOROS succeeds big time in creating a modern day creation that easily could have been embedded in say the world of 1975 and no one would have thought otherwise. The album may evoke a sense of nostalgia but certainly fits well into the modern world as well. The production is a perfect mix of warm and inviting tones and timbres that create a complementary commendation of all the greats. This is a brilliant debut by this squirmy band from Minsk but still needs a little more time to coalesce into something outstandingly original IMHO. While more than competent at taking disparate prog elements and sewing them together in pleasing ways, they unfortunately fail to create a seamless album that suspends all imagination allowing the listener to detach from the experience. Not perfect but a damn good listening experience nonetheless.

1. "L'Impasse Sainte Bérégonne" (4:26) pompous and jagged, this is a prog song with avant-jazz leanings. (8.75/10)

2. "Shelieth" (8:28) coming across like a Canterbury style song--though more in the SETNA style--here is a song that soothes in an old 1970s smooth jazz-rock fusion kind of way. Jazz electric guitar takes the lead over the first three minutes before relinquishing it to a spacey synth in the fourth and a nose-flute-like synth in the fifth. Despite the overall Canterbury feel that the underlying Fender Rhodes gives this, there are instances in which I'm reminded of other bands like Focus and Styx and Camel--this latter especially in the searing "Rhyader"-like guitar solo of the seventh minute. Nice song! (18.75/20)

3. "Ladybird on a Moebius Strip" (1:47) electrified acoustic guitar being picked while flutes play over the top. Very pretty. Again, kind of CAMEL-esque. (4.5/5)

4. "The Pear-Shaped Man" (5:16) pensive foundation to this before accented English voice enters and sings about the pear-shaped man. A cross between Camel and Focus that entertains but will not get many rotations into my playlists despite its nice instrumental third minute. (8.5/10)

5. "Dawn Angel" (2:03) acoustic guitar and electrified acoustic guitar weave a nice little English-sounding folk tune with their interlaced picking. Nice though nothing extraordinary. (4.25/5)

6. "Pirates in Pingaree" (7:43) more instrumental symphonic music sounding very much like CAMEL and FOCUS--sounds and shifting motifs quite like both bands. There's even a little JTULL and KCRIMSON in there. (13/15)

7. "The Magi" (1:43) electrified acoustic guitar and flute weaving a little English folk tune together. At 0:45 Sergey Gvozdyukevich enters singing in a bit of a Ian Anderson or Scottish folk singer's lilting voice. Again, I am surprised to be hearing English. (4.25/5)

8. "Soleil Noir" (6:10) gentle four chord progression within which dirty Fender, electrified acoustic guitar, maletted toms and simple bass support Sergey's Gentle Phil Collins-like voice in a very "One for the Vine"-like performance. For the first four minutes, the music is disappointingly simple--again, not unlike the music of half of Wind and Wuthering--but then it gets harsh as Sergey and Co. try a kind of "The Knife"-like breakout of aggression. It kind of works. Still, nice performance by Sergey. (8.5/10)

9. "The Curfew" (7:42) ominous muscal base over which Sergey enters singing in some low Native American-sounding chants. Interesting! This is theatric in a kind of PETER HAMMILL kind of way. At 2:28 there is a shift into a more full-band structure to support Sergey's continued attempts to channel his dead Siberian ancestors. Too bad the music is so simple, otherwise this could be interesting. inNot even the LAtimer/Akkerman lead guitar melody and solo in the fifth minute can save this one (the foundational music established and maintained by the rhythm section is too disco-corny). Okay Hammond solo in the sixth and seventh minutes, nothing special. (13/15)

10. "Return to the Cold Sea of Nothing" (9:50) nice late-1960s bluesy psych rock sound established in the first minute that includes Wurlitzer organ and reed winds. Sergey enters singing in a theatric kind of voice reminiscent of classic prog artists like Eroc! (Grobschnitt), Doroccus (Babylon), Geoff Mann (Twelfth Night), Fish, Dave Cousins, Frank Bournemann, Greg Lake, Ian Anderson, and Peter Gabriel. The music has quite an early GENTLE GIANT feel to it due to the strong presence of the various reeds. (18/20)

11. "Hope" (2:22) another folk song with nice acoustic guitar and flute interplay. Very pretty. (4.5/5)

Total Time 57:30

Boy! AltrOck sure knows how to pick 'em! And the production is always of the very highest quality, which helps. The musicians here are quite proficient performing these fairly sophisticated songs--many of which are quite melodic and engaging.

B+/4.5 stars; a near-masterpiece of retro sounding symphonic progressive rock music that would be a welcome addition to any prog lover's