DREAMER

This musician has an interesting geographical background: Anton was born in the Iranian capital Teheran, his father is Dutch, his mother is Belgian, he grew up in the Dutch city Laren and at an early age the family went to the USA.

Listening to this debut CD I notice that the eight compositions sound like a journey through a beautiful and varied musical landscape with lots of surprising and exciting ideas. The music sounds modern but in some songs I trace elements from the Seventies symphonic prog like the titletrack (Floydian atmosphere and slide guitar, wonderfuly blended with violin-Mellotron waves) and Mid Summer's Day (Yes during the Fragile-Close To The Edge era featuring great Howe- like guitar and frequent runs on the organ along great interplay between guitar and organ). A strong point on this album is the tasteful colouring of the melodic and accessible music, it contains many flowing shifting moods, good soli and strong breaks like a swinging Hammond organ solo in the final part of Near Or Far, a biting wah-wah guitar solo and sensitive acoustic - and Spanish guitar (with castagnettes) in the symphonic On To The Afterglow and a strong build-up with pleasant sounds on piano, organ, vibraphone and cello along a blistering wah-wah guitar solo in the fairy tale-like The Spider. My only negative remark goes to the vocals, at some moments these tend to sound a bit too theatrical but it's not disturbing.

Anton Doolaart has delivered a very adventurous symphonic prog album that sounds both melodic and accessible as tastefully and elaborate, well done fellow Dutchman!