MOSAIK

Mosaik have been considered as an off-shoot band of the legendary Swedish proggers Atlas, but instrumental credits reveal the secret of a rather personal project by the band's guitarist Janne Persson, even if a couple of other Atlas members are on the album, namely keyboardist Erik Bjorn Nielsen and bassist Ulf Hedlund.Apparently Persson started this effort only months after the release of Atlas' ''Bla vardag'' album, kicking off with the recordings in 1980 at Berges Ljudstudio in Malmo.Persson is the only musician to be featured in all tracks, helped out by a long list, including Hans Annéllsson on guitar, Micke Pinotti on drums, Dan Bornemark and Karl Witting on lead vocals, Peter Nilsson on saxes and Tomas Gunnarsson on violin.The self-titled album of Mosaik came out in 1981 in a private vinyl press.

It starts off quite nicely with some lovely Folk elements and melodic Symphonic Rock leanings with strong GENESIS overtones, much in the vein of compatriots ISILDURS BANE, with ''Bjornstorp'' being a real winner, highlighted by intense instrumental interplays, crafty melodies and some ethnic nuances.But soon Persson would take the whole thing into a softer, jazzier direction with some Avant-Garde leanings and evident minimalistic tendencies, resulting an effort empty of consistency, dynamics and energy.The rest of the album lies somewhere between Jazz, Jazz Rock and Chamber Folk, moving far away from electric textures and structured around sax, violin, flute and piano lines, which create very relaxing and slow music to the point it becomes quite hypnotic and monotonous.The pair of vocal tracks has an Acoustic Pop flair, the long pieces are extremely overstreched with repetitive ideas and gentle instrumentation and only the 14-min. ''Re-Bapp'' contains some room for the reincarnation of instrumental intensity and careful interactions.Pretty much a period long piece with angular synth lines and lots of jazzy piano in a Fusion matrix, much keyboard-driven with soloing excess and overall a questionable sound.More dynamics are only left to be desired, Persson & co. will soon return into a pastoral and soft musicianship with no particular direction or hidden values, following a Jazz/Folk vein.

As soon as the story of Mosaik was over, Persson remained for a few years in the music industry, playing with smaller bands, like Jackwave or Hard Rockers Grace, while Nielsen played also until late-80's with Bag Of Rhythm and Silver Mountain.

Promosing Symph/Folk start, which soon will fall into a minimalistic enviroment of uninteresting jazzy and folky sounds.Recommended to prog collectors, as no CD issue has ever seen the light and the original press has become pretty expensive over time.