A STORY OF MYSTERIOUS FOREST

In my experience with jazz rock/fusion, I must say not many bands sound like Ain Soph; maybe it has to do with the fact that they are influenced by many bands, including Camel, Genesis and Pink Floyd. There's a great deal of what one could hear from a 90's or 00's King Crimson album (particularly on the dissonant chord progressions and the electronic ambience).

One department of this album that I found a bit lacking in dynamics was the guitar playing, using very conservative patterns while apparently to just shifting frets and strings: not much inventiveness and appears to compromise in just showing shred skills with the right hand, while the left just repeats the same scale, the same finger sequence. In the song "Variations on a theme by Brian Smith" the guitar playing is a bit improved, often playing chromatic scales to change the routine. Even so, the guitar player sounded promising; just not fulfilling the promise. He also delivers a beautiful acoustic guitar spot on "Interlude I".

For me the most memorable song is "Natural Selection", and just for it's mad bridge (which reminds me a lot to RTF's latin-jazz releases and a bit of their "Musicmagic" album). "Variations On A Theme by Brian Smith" is also very latin-sounding with again odd chord progressions. The sidelong title track is a mixed bag: it start with a very symphonic-prog feel (including superb harpsichord segments), and then we're in for a very Pink Floyd sounding section; then the next evokes Gentle Giant/PFM a little; finally, the intro is reprised in the outro and then the climax would prolongue itself into the Interlude II (which is a wrong term for the piece, since it doesn't stand between two large parts but at the very end of the album). I feel it's a bit overextended but not overly annoying.

So here you have it, perhaps not their best effort but surely it's worthy of trying out if you are a fusion fan who also happens to love symphonic "prog" or King Crimson.

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