THE SEARCH FOR JOY

It's always unfortunate when prog musicians leave us. Such was the case just recently when I heard the news of the passing of Bill Gillham who was the founder and composer of Cirrus Bay. The band was essentially his as the other musicians seem to play more of a supportive role (ie guest musicians) rather than be actual band members. As such, their release from 2019 titled "The Art Of Vanishing" will unfortunately (and ironically) most likely be their last.

The music on this release is very pleasant folk tinged symphonic prog. To be honest, it doesn't really have that much in common with neo-prog despite the fact that they are labelled that on here. Listen to this and then listen to things like IQ, Pallas, Arena, Marillion, etc and you'll see what I mean. I haven't heard the other albums by this band so maybe they are more like those. I don't know for sure.

Regardless of how you want to define the music, there's much to enjoy here. Some parts have nice lead electric guitar but there is also acoustic guitar providing a backdrop to everything else at times. All of this has symphonic keyboards often used as a backdrop as well as recorders (at first I thought I heard some flute but there's none credited on here). Although this has very nice female vocals by Anisha Norflet, there are also some very good instrumental sections woven in as well.

Overall, this is a very fine release that should please many fans of symphonic prog and Renaissance in particular and also other similar types of bands. 3.5 stars.