THE GATES OF OMEGA

This is a magnificent album. What I find particularly admirable about the music is how Moongarden achieve a high level of compositional sophistication without allowing its complexity to become too conspicuous. Often, Progressive Rock strives too hard in its desire to employ unusual time-signatures and inventive harmonies such that the resulting music sounds awkward and contrived. It is, however, easy to overlook this album's sophistication even though it abounds in these musical attributes. What might sound like a straightforward harmonic riff involving a few repeated chords is often a carefully evolving structure which slowly builds to achieve an emotional intensity that is so often missing in Progressive Rock. Moongarden albums are often categorised a 'Neo-Prog' but the compositional sophistication here suggests that the label is unfair. The music also includes all the distinctive characteristics which render it clearly a Moongarden production ? the interplay between the guitarist and keyboardist, without involving flashy displays of instrumental virtuosity, is...well, always tasteful and somehow 'correct'. As with their previous albums, the music is overwhelmingly sad (what, I wonder, as I listen to it, happened to the band's members to make them capable of such melancholy). But such sadness is usually expressed in a way that is exquisitely beautiful and sometimes quite moving. If I have any quibbles, and they are only minor, it is that sometimes the layering of keyboards and studio 'effects' renders the music a little too mushy making me hope for some intervening sharpness to offset the prevailing mellowness and some of the tracks do seem to overstay their welcome and seem strangely reluctant to finish. But, overall, as I said at the beginning of this short review, this is a magnificent album.