ROINE STOLT

Roine Stolt's second solo album sees a slight decrease in the amount of guitar and a marked increase in saxophone. Whether or not Roine was pushing for a more jazzy sound, he definitely achieved it here. Like 'The Flower King', the melodies and arrangements are superb.

I would say while there is nothing here that is over-the-top amazing, there are definitely no weak tracks either. My personal ratings of the tracks are as follows: Cosmic Lodge (10/10), Shipbuilding (8/10), Little Cottage By the Sea (6/10), Wreck of the HMS Nemesis (9/10), Bizarre Seahorse Sex Attack (8/10), Nuclear Nemo (9/10), Hydrophonia (9/10), Lobsterland Groove (7/10), Seafood Kitchen Thing (9/10)

Overall, don't let the silly names confuse you! This is an amazing album and marks Roine at the top of his game.

8/10

Though labeled as a Roine Stolt solo album, this should be considered the very first Flower Kings album. The album is missing the input of key members Tomis Bodin, who appeared on the next album, and Jonas Reingold, who joined the bad for Space Revolver. Roine, therefore, wrote all the material and played most of the instruments. Nevertheless, the album still sounds like early Flower Kings.

The Flower King is dominated by guitar, with the keyboards taking a more rhythmic role. The album is also mostly instrumental, with Roine doing most of the vocals. I think the thing I like most about this album is its flawless mixing of great melodies and tasteful extended (and rather jazzy) guitar jams. Like Hackett, Howe, and Gilmore, Roine Stolt definitely has his own style of guitar playing that is immediately recognizable, and has quickly become one of my favorites of the instrument. The album starts of with the eponymous 'The Flower King,' (10/10) which is practically an anthem for the subsequent band and their music. Positive, upbeat, melodic and guitar driven. It's the only song to feature Hasse on vocals besides the ending reprise. An amazing song and an appropriate first song for the Flower Kings.

'Dissonata' (10/10) is similar in length and style to the The Flower King. It starts with some dramatic Stolt vocals and develops into one of the best melodies/solos at around the four minute mark before ending similarly to how it began.

'The Magic Circus of Zeb' (10/10) is probably my favorite song of the album. It has some amazing melodies up until around the three minute mark where it features, in my opinion, Roine Stolt's best solo, which is filled with guitar distortion and in a Gilmour-esque style.

'Close Your Eyes' (6/10) is just a short little song with a nice atmosphere of guitars and vocals, but otherwise is rather uninteresting.

'The Pilgrims Inn' is a fantastic instrumental featuring great guitar work by Roine. The sax is also a prominent instrument here and will continue to be in albums to come.

'The Sounds of Violence' (10/10) is an crazy upbeat tune with some awesome melodies on both guitar and keyboard.

'Hummanizzimo' (10/10) is easily one of The Flower King's better epics, along with Stardust We Are and I Am the Sun. The song keeps hitting you with one melody after another, and when there isn't one, Roine's tasteful soloing keeps your interest.

The final track, 'Scanning the Greenhouse' (8/10) serves as a loose reprise for the first song.

Overall, this album is probably the best Flower Kings album (if you attribute it to them), and one of my favorite albums of all time. Luckily, Roine and company will continue to produce music similar in quality to this in their future albums.

10/10

Those who enjoy The Flower Kings ought not pass this sterling album with Roine Stolt at the helm. Excepting the distinct bass work from Jonas Reingold, this album has all the ingredients fans of The Flower Kings would love even though it predates their proper debut by a year. There's nothing more to say really- an excellent symphonic progressive rock album by one of the genre's most respected guitarists.

'The Flower King' Soothing lead guitar sweetly sings in before a sound breaks through that is distinctively The Flower Kings: And that refrain has to be the most definitive archetype for them- happy, uplifting, and even a little bit silly. Stolt demonstrates his proficiency with blues guitar, eventually stepping aside for a symphonic synthesizer solo. Overall, it is a wondrous piece of music and the crown of the album.

'Dissonata' A bit on the darker side of The Flower Kings, this second tune has a bit of cabaret camp that tries to masquerade as serious and sinister. The melodic theme and its variations in the middle passage are well-executed and a welcome evolution.

'The Magic Circus of Zeb' A mostly peppy and colorful instrumental, this piece evokes the spectacles of a circus without ever becoming hackneyed in the course of doing so. It features soulful guitar work.

'Close Your Eyes' The Flower Kings are, for me, notorious for filler tracks. This is one of those. It is a slow, plodding bit of new age with decent vocals and good guitar.

'The Pilgrims Inn' The musicians return to the uplifting sound from before but add some baroque flourishes. It is full of both electric and acoustic guitar exhibitions.

'The Sounds of Violence' As the title implies, this one hangs on the heavier and darker music Stolt and company are capable of. The last bit consists of bass and electric guitar soloing quietly around one another.

'Humanizzimo' The twenty-minute piece starts with the most subdued music on the album, consisting of Mellotron flute. About a quarter of the way through, the music becomes a tad too giddy for my liking. My take on this is similar to my judgment of many epics from The Flower King (and there are many): Sonically pleasant but rarely engaging. I enjoy this song in parts, but as a whole it tries to accomplish too much.

'Scanning the Greenhouse' The final three minutes and forty-five seconds of this album offer some more guitar soloing before launching into a fine vocal passage that culminates in a reprisal of that elevating refrain from 'The Flower King.'

Being as behind on things as I have been over the years I didn't stumble upon the music of Roine' Stolt and The Flower Kings until I became aquainted with the internet. Finding them is one of the greatest of my discoveries in the past few years. I first heard this album when I was stationed in Afghanistan in 2009 and hearing it helped me out a whole bunch! Just like the best FK stuff this is a rich and exciting recording. The title track is a wonderful beginning and everything that follows is no less enjoyable. It must have been glorius for many other old-time prog heads to hear this in the middle of the 90's, a decade crammed with garbage pretending to be music. I'm glad I was able to catch up and with other epics like Space Revolver and Stardust We Are I can hear that the legacy of prog is in good hands! Thank you Roine'! You deserve a statue!

One more obscure recording of Sweden´s most important prog figures to rise in the 90´s. But before Stolt would conquer the prog scene with his Flower Kings, and after he left another seminal prog band of the 70´s (Kaipa), he had a real awful time during the 80´s. Well, almost everybody in prog had a hard time through that period. And mr Stolt was no exception. If on his previous output (1985´s Behind The Walls) it seemed that some big recoding tycoon decided to make him a pop/new wave star, this time around it sounds like someone thought he could be the swedish version of new R&B artists who were having radio hits like Robert Cray and Steve Ray Vaughan.

So this time we have an uneven collection of songs that goes through pop, blues, jazz, R&B and gospel. Even a the Dire Stratis style is thrown in for good measure (on Shine and Ring Of light, for instance). While the overall quality of the songs is much superior to his previous effort (an easy task, I should say), once more several tracks are marred by the typical 80´s production, with those cheesy, ever present plastic synth sounds and drum programming. However, I reckon he was beginning to find his voice: his singing is much more focused and convincing now, and he does sound like Roine Stolt this time. His guitar solos are also excellent. The guy really had the chops to face the challenge of pedaling in the aforementioned styles without making a fool of himself. But don´t expect anything prog here. He was yet to find his own way in 1989.

All in all I didn´t find The Lonely Heartbeat not even nearly as bad as Behind The Walls (again, it was expected). If you like 80´s FM radio friendly rock and R&B, chances are you´ll probalby enjoy this album. But if you´re looking for something prog, just skip all his entire solo discography during that decade. it´s amazing how he would eventually appear with such masterpiece of symphonic prog as The Flower King in a little more than four years after such dubious work that this CD surely is. Besides, he has recently proved he could release a much stronger album in the blues/hard rock style recently (2010´s Wall Street Voodoo), with lots of personality and without the pop elements found here..

Rating: in this site, this is for completionists/collectors/hardcore fans only, in that order. 2 stars.

Good lord! That was really a surprise! And not a good one, really. Think of any 80´s worst cliches and it´s more than likely you´ll find it here. Small wonder this album is so obscure and not even mentioned on The Flower Kings official site! It´s an embarassment for mr. Stolt. It seems that in the mid 80´s someone thought it would be a good idea to turn the ex Kaipa guitarrist into a pop star. But it never worked out and I guess everyone involved would much rather forget this CD. So if already know the guy as one of the single most important prog artists of today, or as the extraordinaire musician/songwriter he surely is, be warned: there is NOTHING prog - or even close to anything prog - here.

What we have here is a bunch of pop/new wave tunes with a very reasonable production for the time. While the music itself is not particularly bad per se ( if you like 80´s pop, of course, like a mix of Hall & Oates and Dire Straits, sometimes he seems to be emulating Mark Knopfler´s vocals), it´s so embarassing to hear Stolt singing those cheesy love lyrics while backed by equally awfull plastic sounding synths, eletronic drums, pseudo soul saxophones and the like. Even the guitar playing is unrecognizable, although he still manages to produce a few decent solos like he does on the title track and, specially, on the album´s closer Into The light (the only real high point in the entire album, but only because of the very good guitar part).

Conclusion: more a curio than anything else. And even then, only for the completionists and collectors. Even hardcore fans will probably be very disappointed with this disastous experiment. I never thought I´d give such low rate for a Roine Stolt related album, but I guess everyone is entitled to make a few mistakes in life. And for a prog site like PA 1.5 stars is the most I can rate it. I´m glad I didn´t have to spend my hard earned money to listen to it (I borrowed from a friend). Avoid it.

Well, I guess it is no surprise that nowadays prog´s most prolific songwriter would deliver a double solo album sooner or later. After all he wrote most of The Flower Kings repertoire and they already had released 3 two set CDs of original material. What surprised everyone it seems to be the style adopted here: this is much more early 70´s hard/blues rock than the symphonic prog we are expecting for. However, I disagree with some reviewers that say this stuff has nothing to do with the Flower Kings. Anyone who is familiar with their sound will recognise the style of TFK songs like Don´t Let The Devil In or The Judas Kiss as very similar of the tracks included here. And a few of the those could be on any 90´s TFK CDs, like the Cd 2´s second tune, the very inspired Remember.

However, it is also clear that both the music and the lyrics are usually quite different from what Stolt´s has been releasing lately, both solo or with his several side projects. Even if Neil Morse is present here, there is no influence of Spock´s Beard or Transatlantic. The premise seems to be, musicly, a homage to those blues rock artists from the early 70´s. So you´ll find lots of slide and wah-wah guitars, big fat Hammond runs and some good percussions. Stolt proves once and for all he is one fo the best guitarrists around and he can play just about anything with great taste and technique. And most important, he is also a terrific songwriter. The lyrics are much more direct, spiteful and angry, but are very well written and on target (today´s capitalism and greed).

While I found Wall Street Voodoo a little too much to listen to in one sitting, all the songs are at least good, with some very fine highlights along the way like the very ironic Sex Kills and the aforementioned Remember, one of his best. The recording quality is top notch, the musicians are excellent and, if you like the style, the tracklist is quite strong. I never thought I´d hear Stolt playing guitar like this and, boy, does he plays! His solos and riffs are amazing and will please even the most hardcore Eric Clapton/Leslie West fan!

As for the musicians he chose all I can say is that Marcus Liliequist was hardly TFKJ´s best drummer, but here he does a fine job and seems to be much more at ease now than with his time with the band. Neil Morse is also very good on the Hammond and does some lead singing. My only gripe with this album are the vocals, since both Stolt´s and Morse´s voices are ok, but they are not the best singers for this style of music. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a ´real´ blues vocalist as a guest next time. But that´s a minor issue, if you can call it an issue at all.

Conclusion: an excellent blues rock/prog rock album. The vocals may sound a bit odd for the style, since I will always identify it as a Flower Kings trademark, and I think that it will be the same with all TFK fans. But the high quality of the songs, the brilliant playing (specially Stolt´s stunnig, shinning rocking guitar) and the edgy lyrics make this a different, but remarkable record by one of prog´s truly genious.

Rating: four strong stars.

This record > The entire Flower Kings back catalogue...

The eponymous solo album that led to the formation of the band.

The Good: In the early 1990s Roine Stolt had a dream. Well, it was more of a vision. There was too much negativity and aggression in modern music and something needed to be done about it. Roine harnessed the power of the resurging symphonic prog wave, and unleashed this tree hugging, circle dancing, free loving beast. Whilst he had released solo albums in the past, they had all been rock and pop orientated and quite inferior to his previous work with Kaipa. In comparison the compositions found here are fantastic and showcase why he is one of my favourite guitarists. The soloing is tasteful and interesting, and the opening hook of the title track is just magical. He's also quite adept on the keyboards with some great work on The Sounds of Violence.

The Bad: Close Your Eyes, The Pilgrims Inn and Humanizzimo have their moments, but they're not quite as strong as the rest of the tracks.

The Verdict: I'd really, really love to give this five stars as it's one of my favourite albums, but I can't justify overlooking the brief 'lulls' in creativity.

A very difficult album to understand. Fantasia is supposed to be Roine Stolt´s group after he left Kaipa in the late 70´s. Now their first album bears his name. A ruse to fool record buyers after the amazing success he had with his band The Flower Kings and his other several side projects (Transatlantic, The Tangent, Agents of Mercy, etc)? Probably. Anyway, after getting two magnificent 90´s solo albums (The Flower King and Hydrophonia, both 5 star affairs) I had to listen to his previous cathalog to see what he has done before. Of course I was not expecting much, and I had been warned. This album has very little to do with his terrific works he released since The Flower King (1994).

In fact, this CD sounds nothing like has done after AND before that year, so forget any Kaipa (musical) connections here even if Kaipa members Mats Lindberg (bass) and Mats Löfgren (vocals) are featured on Fantasia. The album totally lacks focus or direction, going from one style to the other like it was a different band on each track. And the songwriting is far from perfect too, unfortunatly. So we have disco/pop, straight folk, jazz rock/fusion, lounge, some Genesis influenced prog parts and even ambient tunes. All done separatly. And even if there are some very fine guitar solos from time to time, most of the stuff is not strong enough to call a highlight. Most of the material has nothing to do with anything we are accostumed to hear from mr Stotl, save a few instrumental parts. All vocals are sung in swedishm but Stolt rarely sings a note here. The vocal tracks are not the best either.

Conclusion: this CD is more a curio than anything else. Clearly Roine Stolt was already an excellent guitarrist, but he needed time to mature his songwriting skills and find his own way. Fantasia is for the hardcore fan who wants to know his first attempts to find his musical path after he left Kaipa. The disco connection on a few tracks will shock some, but on the other hand there are a few hints of the sound he would go to develop in the 90´s, both solo and with his main group.

Definitly for collectors and completionists.

It took me a long time to write this review. I knew that I would probably like this album since I loved Stolt´s previous one so much (The Flower King). But I must say I was a bit skeptical to get Hydrophonia. In my mind the question was obvious: would he reach the heighs of The Flower King? But when I heard that this one was a totally instrumental album I had to get it. After all, who wouldn´t like to see how a Flower King album would sound if they were a purely instrumental band? After all sometimes the lyrics and voices dsitract us from the fact that those guys are outstanding musicians in a genre full of outstanding musicians. So the answer for both questions is yes. He did live up to my high hopes. And Hydrophonia does sound like a Flower King album. And not just one, but one of their very best. Let´s see.

The first thing that amazed me is the fact that there are only 3 people playing here: ex TFK Jaime Salazar on drums and percussion, long time friend and also a constant presence on most TFK albums Ulf Wallander on soprano sax and Stolt himself on guitars, keyboards, bass and percussion. The second was that while Stolt is defintly renown for his skills on guitar, few people noticed he is also an accomplished keyboards player and bassist. However, his biggest asset lays on his songwriting: who else could penned over 67 minutes of music for a solo album (not forgetting he also writes 90% of everything TFK records) and make it so good it holds your atention all the way through the CD? Yes, the music here is varied, complex, creative, catching, symphonic and will please everyone who happens to like fine music. As usual his influences are easy to see: 70´s symphonic prog (Yes, Genesis, King Crimson), jazz, fusion, classical music and even some avant guard and experimentalisms a la Frank Zappa. And yet he not only recycles them (that damned retro label!), but turn it into a music of his own. Somehow this statement is clearer when you hear it without the vocals.

The production is top notch, but the playing is superb: this instrumental work is an excellent opportunity for Stolt to exercise his terrific skills as the great musician he surely is. While it seems unlikely that he can extract the best from such elaborate songs doing most of the instrumentation himself, you won´t miss any outside help in any department. Of course there are some slight differences from a typical TFK record, as there are no vocals and the fact that Wallander has more freedom to play, giving this CD a more jazzy feeling. Again it is incredible how the general atmosphere of the record is that of a team efford, rather than a solo output.

The quality of the tracks varies from very good to brilliant. In my opinion the first two, Cosmic Lodge and Shipbuilding are among his best ever. Simply beautiful!

Conclusion: extremely elaborated, yet pleasant to the ears and highly addictive. Hydrophonia is a timeless piece of music that will probably show future generations that prog music was alive and very well represented in the 90´s. it is also a proof of the genius of Roine Stot as a musician and songwriter.

One of the best prog albums of all time.

Rating: 5 stars with honors.