Camelias Garden (Italy) for RPI

There certainly is an astonishing difference in style between the six samples on Reverbnation and the YouTube sample 'A Useless Faith' (which is often a feature of RPI), but I don't know enough about the sub genre to say if this music really belongs to it. I always expect true RPI music to be sung in Italian, but I'm not sure if this is actually an essential requirement. My own feelings about this band from what I have heard so far  that make me think they would be best in either Crossover or Eclectic, but I think we really need to hear the whole album because some of this material actually sounds a bit weak on the prog side to me - whether the stronger tracks and the variations in style between the compositions compensates sufficiently for this remains to be seen. The 3-minute instrumental 'Broken Jar' is probably my favourite track of the Reverbnation samples - definitely classically inspired in true RPI tradition, with a short section in the middle that for a moment sounds as though it could have come straight out of Genesis's 'Trick of The Tail' ('Ripples', I think)...and 'An Endless Faith' itself is truly a superb piece of symphonic progressive rock  (starts off much like Steve Hackett's 'Twice Around The Sun' from his 'Darktown' album). I'm pretty sure that this band is decent PA material - the indisputably proggy stronger tracks (some of the others sound not unlike Steve Hackett's more recent material from the 2nd half of the last decade) will pretty well guarantee that imo, but this is going to be a tough one to assign sub-genre wise overall, I feel.

Edited by yam yam - September 12 2012 at 09:38

Thanks Jim. I was just about to send it to your team for first look.

Interesting, a nice bit of acoustic folkie stuff and some tastier jams....from a brief listen I'd say this is going to fall under an art rock or folk category....my suggestion is to wait until they have an official release that is out.  Once we see a track list we will know how many of the samples actually are from the release, and can make a determination on whether it's enough or if we need to obtain the album first.  I'm not comfortable doing a formal eval based on what is presented here. 

Let's hold this open until we see what transpires with the actual release.  Thanks all.

^ Fantastic! 

http://soundcloud.com/camelias-garden  

 I'm pretty sure that these guys deserve great attention in the current prog scene in Japan, watching the success of Moon Safari. The English lyrics are very nice, and what's more, the Genesis-like atmosphere is very comfortable to listen to. Genesis in their youth  <--- that's my impression.

These guys have been added to Prog Folk.  Thanks for the recommendation!

 

yam yam wrote: I'm confused!   The stark difference between 'A Useless Faith' and the rest of the samples for this band made me load the video on YouTube itself for further info...and there's none (It is also embedded in the middle of the band's reverbnation page, again with no info, and when you click the 'All Videos' button there is nothing actually displayed there for Camelias Garden...) When I say no info, I mean no info! There are no tags, no 'likes' or 'dislikes', no comments, and no description other than "The video identified with the URL {http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LLF7ZwShQo} has a soundtrack under license of Creative Commons" . Stated category is simply 'music', and we have the the obligatory 'standard YouTube licence'. There is nothing to say where this video originated, and who is actually perfoming it. I can't find anything to suggest it is to be included on the forthcoming album, & I can't hear anything that sounds remotely like it in the AltrOck/Fading Records medley for this release on bandcamp.   However, it was uploaded by user http://www.youtube.com/user/oirelav8891, 'Valerio's Wondrous World', and he has 25 vids in all - some of which are superb tributes he has put together based on material by well known bands (King Crimson, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree etc.), and it also it turns out that the keyboard player and vocalist of Camelias Garden is named Valerio Smordoni (first name coincidence? - I doubt it!), and we already know from the reverbnation bio that Camelias' Garden was born as a one-man project...What's more the Camelias Garden live vids he has uploaded are 3 months old whereas 'A Useless Faith' is 2 years old, and he has other similar sorts of rather excellent vids, of similar age, which he has apparently created himself (he seems to be a very talented multi-instrumentalist, who also excels on the production side of things too), so I have a feeling that this video/song is actually nothing to do whatsoever with the current Camelias Garden project, but simply a bit of wonderful personal indulgence by the very gifted keyboard player around which the band is based.   What a shame eh?   However he has uploaded this:         Which is great, and definitely IS Camelias Garden!!    So enjoy!!    And check out Valerio's Wondrous World too...there's one or two surprises on there for sure!!

Hi!
you can find HERE the second preview from Camelias Garden's upcoming album, 'Kite'!
Enjoy!!

Hmm, I'm enjoying the new album Kite (although not as much as the previous) but I seem to be detecting some use of autotune here and there. Or is it just me?