FOYERS OF THE FUTURE

The second album of Finnish group Moonwagon introduces a more organic and acoustic oriented soundrealms than was heard on their versatile debut record, which shimmered colder vastness of interstellar visions with credible force and talent. Beautiful album covers support descripting this transition process neatly, showing group members exploring the surface of new world found after cosmic travelling. After seeing the band performing live on stage here in Helsinki, I first felt that the earlier bit heavier material worked better, but there are certainly merits on this disc with a new angle to the music, and I think the album works as a fully composed entity very well. The acoustic guitars and pianos give more relaxed overall feeling to the music, and allow more dominant role to bass guitar and emphasize arrangement details. The synthesizers are also very strongly present, and work as a melodic lead instrument on the opener "Elsewhere". Their sound brings some pleasant associations of Camel's classic tunes to my mind, and the more hypnotic aural ambiences carry the compositions towards guitar and drums emphasized lounging. Following "New World Warrior" has pleasant vintage heavy rock kick in it, resembling from sound perspective slightly late 70's Uriah Heep with touches of Hawkwind's spacey magic. The group also continues with personal line of mixing more modern and heavier elements to the first presented older themes, staying in touch with their time and reaching more personality than through purist style mimicking. "Dawnwind" was one of the song highlights of the album for me, built from quite simple but well working elements of rhythmic pulse and synth themes, creating a sensation of voyaging in space, and visiting fine guitar solo licks and riff constructions.

"Endless Collision" is a shorter visitation to the acoustic vantage points of this album, and a great place for melodic bass guitar drive also. I wonder if Joni's commitment on folk duo act Vellamo is an effect or a cause to this acoustic direction; Whatever the truth is, the end result sounds sincere and convincing. Both "Through The Veil of Rain" and "Shadows Whisper Fire" are quite relaxed and longer showers of the group's musical kindness, in some parts creating associations to Anekdoten's later songs due union of Mellotron sounds, acoustic guitars and fluidly vibrating audio effect treatments. These compositions also use patiently their duration to morph carefully to several interesting directions. "Saturn Summer" follow is them as quite short but very pleasant piece, basking on the shine of keyboards and calmed by the gusts of refreshing guitar solo weaves. There are also certain proves that some Caribbean culture has been spread beyond the asteroid belt also.

The album starts to close with minor motives of "Past Moves", a song which will find later more upright feelings, slightly resembling the joyful moments from "Machine Messiah" of Yes. This set of maneuvers concludes to "Tranceport", which seems to be the most crystallized compositional effort on the album. From sounds the end result could be compared to early 80's Hawkwind records, the acoustic guitars and more relaxed feelings crafting the visions then towards more personal own sound territories. The dramatic curve flows from open synth space to steadier guitar riff passage, slowly gaining power for a warp drive jump of uncertain future. I hope this transition leap would reveal later more pleasant music on a form of third album from this sympathetic group appearing from hyperspace.

I admit I slightly miss lead vocals from the music, though there are some distant chanting and choirs here and there. This desire rises just from my own personal taste preferences, as I would love to experience stronger human presence from singing. On the other hand, it is better to play instrumentally than ruin a band though bad vocal performance - a demise I feel witnessed much too often. Also the musicians use plenty of energy to compensate the melodics of the missing vocal lines with their full instrument repertoire. If you like instrumental music and enjoy good quality cosmic space rock with classic progressive rock influences, this album is certainly a worthy target of inspecting.