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Nurkostam - -C- CD (album) cover

-C-

Nurkostam

 

Neo-Prog

2.55 | 15 ratings

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zravkapt
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
4 stars Nurkostam is a Finnish trio whose name is made up of the members surnames. I listened to this release and the other two by this band but I focused on this one because it seemed the most interesting to me of the three. They are listed here under Neo Prog but on this EP anyway, there is very little I could call Neo. I actually liked this EP a lot and hope their next release is more in this vein. The vocals have a Finnish accent at times which I don't mind but might turn some people off. The music itself is very accessible but not too commercial.

"The Pearl Song" has an electronic sound which I like. Nice vocal harmonies in this song. A little bit of acoustic guitar appears at one point, but otherwise mostly electronic. Features a cool synth solo in the middle. Some electric guitar near the end. This song flows really well. Now the song order on the album page is a little different to the order I heard the album in; I'll go with the order I'm familiar with because it includes a mini-suite made up of three songs. "Gone" is a more acoustic and melancoly song, reminds me of Radiohead but with a different vocalist. Some Mellotron near the end.

"Prison 4" begins with an acoustic guitar style similar to some 1990s music. Vocals and 1980s style keyboards fill out the sound. Halfway it gets more interesting with a nice groove and cool altered background vocals. Gets more electronic sounding later. "Myplanet" starts and ends with astronauts talking. The song is built upon acoustic guitar arpeggios, synth bass and a trip-hop beat. This track features some of the best singing on the EP. I like how there is singing over top of the vocal samples, you don't hear too much of that. "Crawlin' Nation" starts out as a bluesy song, then gets more folky with synths. Later gets more hard rock sounding.

The next three songs almost form a suite musically but they are not segued together. "Intentionally Left Blank" is a 40 second electric paino piece which is nice. Then the song "Slolee" which is the highlight of the whole EP. This has a great rhythm. Nice mix of real drums and drum machine. Love the synth sounds used here. Features some great vocal melodies and harmonies. The lyrics being spoken over the singing is a nice touch. The song gets darker and more sinister sounding before it goes back to that great rhythm, now with slowed down backup vocals. Just a fantastic song. "Shrine" follows and is a 30 second vocoder piece (think Floyd's "A New Machine" from AMLOR).

"Darkmoor" is the last and longest song. It begins as an almost indie/alternative song. Then it goes symphonic prog. Gets almost classical sounding and stays in that section for a few minutes. Becomes more intense with some double-tracked fuzz guitar. The drumming changes to miltaristic and there's some great cymbal bashing. Love the Oldfield meets Canterbury ending featuring some Mellotron at the very end. These are well written songs with great production. I was sent Mp3 files at 192 kbps; as good as they sound, I would like to hear where those files were compressed from. The lyrics sound pretty deep but I'm not exactly sure what they are talking about (they sing in English). This is a really good EP and very consistent. I will give this a 3.5 but round it up to 4 stars.

zravkapt | 4/5 |

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