... TOT LICHT

Who would expect such an exceptional and adventurous album like this to come from Indonesia? At least for me (and certainly for many other people) it was a very nice surprise when I listened to it first time. Actually what the musicians of the band DISCUS are presenting here can be called absolutely revolutionary and spectacular. By defying all conventional rules of progressive music as we used to know it they're merging genres being considered theoretically as just not compatible to each other like punk, metal, jazz, classical, spiritual and traditional to a final blend that is not only highly original, unique and innovative but also very enjoyable and pleasant. Sometimes all (or most of those) different music genres emerge within the same minute (like in the first track) and surprisingly it doesn't sound chaotic at all after several spins and is fitting wondrously together very well. That's the first reason to rate this album with the full score. Second one is the incredibly high diversity of instruments used. Apart from the usual rock line-up i.e. clarinet, saxophone, violin, flute and all sorts of traditional one having names we never heard of. Third reason is the fact that despite all this complexity and oddity they managed to create something like a nice artful atmosphere on here.

First two tracks and the multi-parted "Verso Kartini - door duisternis tot licht!" are the weirdest ones and people having problems with metal growls will hardly find pleasure here. It's hard to describe the music presented here in detail, but roughly spoken it's a mixture of progressive rock, free jazz, Indonesian Gamelan music, Zappa-esque avant-garde, jazz with pleasant female vocals and heavy metal riffs with menacing growls. "P.E.S.A.N." is a very pleasant recovery between all these exhausting style mixes, a traditional song presented with multiple voices in Indonesian language accompanied by flute, clarinet and acoustic guitar. "Music for 5 Players" is (for me) the least enjoyable one, a piece of contemporary classical music presented as alternating solos on string and brass instruments supported by Indonesian percussion. Very well played actually though sounding quite odd at times, but for my taste a bit too - how to say? - pretentious and rather redundant. But this together with the ugly artwork is really the only point of criticism I can put on this album. Last track "Anne" is the one closest to classical old school prog, at least it has a few sections within its 20 minutes running time that sounding close to what we usually understand by this. Nevertheless the diversity of music styles is as well incredible here but it has been done in a more accessible way, so this track would be a suitable one to start with this album. Having a rather ecstatic finish this composition represents a worthy grand finale for an excellent album.

Finally the only thing left for me to say is to highly recommend this band to any prog fan interested in unique and adventurous music. Subtracting the mentioned negative point it still comes to a final rating of 90 % = 4,5 stars, but I'll round up to 5! (Edited 8/5/2006)