CAAMORA

The new Caamora EP kicks off with the excellent eponymous track, bombastic and groovy Neo Prog with fantastic vocals by Swita and a balanced effort by the rest of the team.''Shadows'' sees the band again in a bombastic realm, but this time in a ballad Heavy Rock style with an operatic atmosphere.''I Can See Your House From Here'' (not to be confused with Camel's eponymous effort) follows a similar vein.A strong ballad with the piano of Nolan in evidence but also an obvious Classical influence on the guitar playing.With ''Invisible'' things seem to calm down.The operatic elements are still there though.A smooth piano arrangement by Clive Nolan with Swita singing along strong female choirs supporting.

Another good presentation of what Caamora was trying to seed.Bombastic at moments, definitely operatic Heavy Rock delivery with a grandiose atmosphere, though a bit too much in a ballad mood after the opening track.Strongly recommended if you like this kind of music...3.5 stars.

Reasonably the album falls into the keyboard-based rock category with Nolan dominating the sound with his grandiose and orchestral playing on the rocking numbers and delivering smooth piano parts on the ballads.Agnieszka has a fantastic voice and a wide range of emotional approach with operatic,offensive and warm singing,depending on the track.The overall style has strong links with symphonic music and plenty of Opera elements and gives a good picture of the upcoming ambitious work,while the arrangements are of first class with a cinematic flavor.The role of guitars and the rhythm section is more supporting,but they still add an even more bombastic atmosphere to the general sound-picture.

Clive and Agnieszka managed to catch the attention of public with this short release and making the listener wanting for more.Great symphonic music mixed with rock elements and another proof of Nolan's endless creating talent.Highly recommended.

Compared to the overblown, overly bombastic Rock Opera that was She, what we have on the present release goes to the other extreme; here we get many songs taken from She, but they are stripped down to the very basics, mostly just grand piano and vocals. We also get a few songs by other Clive Nolan projects such as Shadowland, Strangers On A Train, Nolan & (Oliver) Wakeman and Arena, all performed in a similar stripped down fashion. Most of the songs were recorded live in many different places around the world (Poland, England, Chile, Bolivia, Germany, Belgium and Argentina) between 2006 and 2008, but apart from Clive's introductions and the applause at the end of each song, these recordings sounds very much like studio recordings. Karl Groom of Shadowland and Threshold was involved in compiling and mastering these recordings and the end result is sonically impeccable.

The core of Caamora consists of Clive and vocalist Agnieszka Swita and Swita handles most of the lead vocals here. Clive himself sings some parts and a couple of songs are sung by Christina Booth of Magenta and one (Arena's Salamander) by a Sebastian Medina. On the She material, instead of having three or four different vocalists playing different roles in the story, three different keyboard players, two guitarists, a drummer, choir and a full orchestra, etc., Clive and Agnieszka goes at it (almost) all alone here. The dominant element in the music here is Agnieszka's often dramatic vocals and, precisely as in the sleeve picture, she is to the front of the sound and Clive is in the background. In the picture, Agnieszka even leans against Clive's grand piano which plays a merely supporting role for her both literally and musically! Her distinctive voice is as beautiful as she is, but with such a long running time I tend to tire of it somewhat towards the end. Only occasionally are there some rather discrete acoustic guitar and drums in the mix.

I should say up front that I mostly enjoy these acoustic live performances of the She material more than the original Rock Opera versions and that I have the greatest respect for Clive Nolan, who, in fact, is one of my favourite songwriters. Indeed, in my opinion, Journey's End is by far Caamora's best release, but, like the original Rock Opera, this is by no means Prog. Windows Media Player categorizes this as 'Pop' and that is probably right. The songs are all fairly short and there is no room for Clive (or anyone else) to expand instrumentally. The sound and approach remains pretty much the same throughout and it is not easy to sit through the whole two disc set in one go.

The first disc opens with the title track of this anthology which is a new studio recording. At the end of disc two, we get several demos from the She sessions and at the very end an interesting radio interview with Clive and Agnieszka (concluded by a hidden song). The bulk of this anthology is, however, acoustic live recordings.

The informative booklet is filled with comments and pictures and I am very happy to own this lavish set, but Journey's End can really only be recommended to Clive Nolan fans, even if this is very different from anything else he has done in the past including the rest of the Caamora output.

Clive Nolan is a very talented person, both as a songwriter and as a keyboard player. He is also a more than decent singer. This time around he wanted to do a "Rock Opera" and this is indeed close to a genuine Opera. Even if there are also Rock elements like guitars, keyboards and drums, this music is very, very different from Nolan's other bands and projects; Arena, Shadowland, Pendragon, etc. While Caamora is just Clive and Polish singer Agneiszka Swita, they have invited a whole cast for this theatrical affair. In addition to Swita we have lead vocals by three other vocalists including Nolan himself playing the roles of different characters. One of the voices heard is Alan Reed of Pallas fame. We also have three keyboardists, two guitarists and a drummer in addition to a full orchestra! There is really no need to add that this is over- the-top, bombastic and, in my opinion, overblown. There is certainly no lack of talent here; on the contrary, I think that there might be too much of it - there are simply too many people involved.

The material is party strong but with a running time of over two full hours, it becomes a tedious listen. I have listened to the whole thing, but never in one go. I am certain that Nolan could have used the best of this material to make a shorter and more cohesive album and more Rock-based album, but that was not what he wanted to do this time and I respect that. I enjoy some of these songs, but some of them I can hardly stand at all. It often becomes too bombastic for my taste and I wholly loose sight of Rock and see only Opera. I must say that I enjoyed Caamora's EP Walking On Water more than this.

She is possibly Clive Nolan's least interesting musical project ever. I would not call this music progressive in any way. However, it is by no means a poor product, there is indeed much talent involved in it and, like all the things Nolan is involved in, this is a very professional recording. But I can really only recommend it to two groups of people: Clive Nolan fanatics and people with a very special interest in Rock Operas. The rest are bound to find this a bit tedious, overblown and bombastic.

These four songs are so far the only songs I have heard from Caamora. These songs are written in a style very similar to that of Shadowland (which is another one of Clive Nolan's many good bands). All four songs bear a distinct Nolan flavour, both musically and lyrically, but it is clearly the Pop side of Nolan, rather than his Prog side that we have on display here. Even if it is hard not to recognize Nolan's typical way to write songs, there are also aspects of this music that puts Caamora apart from most of the other things he has done. The most obvious difference is the female vocals by Agnieszka Swita. She has a nice voice. Clive also sings some passages himself which further strengthens the similarities with Shadowland in which he was the lead vocalist. His voice blends nicely with Swita's.

As indicated by the cover art, piano is indeed the main instrument in this music. But thankfully this is not just one of those pure piano and vocal sessions, but also incorporate drums, bass and (electric and acoustic) guitars in the right places. However, the four songs all lie in the three and a half to five and a half minute range and there are almost no signs of any real progression in these songs. What we have here is a small selection of well written, but rather basic, Pop/Rock songs. Like anything Nolan is involved with, this is quality music and the production values are high. But needless to say, he has made so very much more impressive music elsewhere.

I would recommend this EP only to hard core fans of Clive Nolan.

And then I can be brief with this one. I don't like opera so it was a mistake by me to buy it. I was blinded by the fact that Clive Nolan had composed the whole thing and he hardly ever did anything disappointing in his career as far as I'm concerned so I was hoping for something great anyway (like Strangers on a Train for instance). I will have to be more demanding in the future and more critical towards my personal needs where the sort of music or album is concerned.

Does that mean this is a poor album ? Absolutely NOT, it's a piece of art that will please many fans of Rock opera's but alas I'm not one of them. My biggest problem overall is the huge domination of the vocals on this album. I'm a great fan of impressive instrumental contributions so then this aspect is disappointing. Besides this the female contributions are much better than the male and the division in time is almost 50-50 here so half of the singing is not really appreciated by me. The instrumental parts are minimal and solos are hardly there at all and since we're talking about over 100 minutes of music here this doubler is almost torture for me.

This is how it all works on me personally, if I look at this piece of art more objectively It could even be a masterpiece or is at least worthy of four stars. And since my personal (subjective) judgment would probably be two stars I will decide for the average this time because it seems the fairest thing to do here so three stars.

As somebody already said, it is long. Far too long, at least I wasn't able to listen it whole, both parts (CD's). But given proper treatment (first part, then second after some time), it's enjoyable.

4(-), barely, because of not so much progressiveness I'm afraid.

We can,t denie the inspiration and the quality of Clive Nolan as musician and composer. A beautiful prog. rock opera.

The music is similar to other prog rock operas as :War of Worlds and Merlin of Kayak,with a touch of Shadowlands music and Magenta,s music.

Very good musicians in stage.

The only objection i can make is that the stage choreography is quite poor.

The story is very similar to the ones of the Italian,s opera ,but quite good.

So a good piece of work of Clive Nolan,s art.

Music is very different than style of Arena, some parts are like other Nolan's project, The Hound of Baskerville. OK, sometimes like Arena, but with woman as vocalist, it's something unfamiliar, yet good. But that's it, it blends a lot of styles together, making new, unique one. Her voice is also quite new and good. I wonder how Clive Nolan's sounds like.

4(-), not much material to listen and after repeated listening it's quite boring, but of course, if you wait some time, it's good again. But after all, it's just EP. Which brings one good fact, it's not too expensive.

I could get into very specific details about my beef with this one but the overriding sense I get is that all the songs sound the same. There are few if any ebbs and flows and no songs stick out. The package is absolutely lovely. The production is clean. The singing is a huge strong point. If I was to bother to follow along to the story, I am sure it would be another plus. I am one of those people who see others get into arguments over production, lyric content and album covers and wonder why when all I am concerned about is the music. She's main problem is that there is nonstop singing in order to get the entire story in and the music is almost an afterthought. The playing is good and Nolan gets in plenty of nice keyboard runs but there are no melodies that stick and the music is given precious little time to be the star of the show. It hurts me to say this as I know he poured his all into every aspect of this album. But the music was not put above all else, which it should be in all instances. Otherwise, I should just go buy a book on the subject. One with a beautiful cover and some lovely artwork inside.

I have waffled between 2 and 3 stars and am going to go two. My expectations were so high and I want to like it. The music is dense and I would like to say that with repeated listens (I have been through it about 6 times) I may change my mind but this is an album that I doubt that would happen. Like me, I think a lot of you have a sixth sense about whether repeated listens will help. I don't think that this will be the case with She.