EXTRAORDINARY

A new band to me and a delightful discovery it is too.

This is the debut album from this Finnish band. An album which does not sound low budget to me. The sound is excellent. But the cost of the musicians is distinct low budget though. The Low Budget Orchestra himself; Mr Mikko Muranen, does everything himself. Nice wage budget !

Normally, this one man does it all approach is not a good thing. But in this case, it actually works. The music, all of it is instrumental, is somewhere between post rock, neo prog and prog metal. Most of the melodies have a post rock build up and where a wall of guitars plays over some keyboards and/or pianos. The keyboards alternate with some clever guitar solos. Yes, some of the music here is air guitar heaven too. The music is pretty simple, but also very clever. Sometimes, less is more and that approach works here.

The overall quality is therefore good. The album is missing some really creative killer tracks. But me think Mikko Muranen can be happy with this album. It is a good effort everyone into post rock and prog metal should check out.

3 stars

Low Budget Orchestra is the name under which Finnish multi-instrumentalist Mikko Muranen explores his progressive side.Formerly he released albums under the monikers Dogmeat and Mutantum and around 2004 he started also this project in order to perform instrumental Progressive Rock music.His first effort was the 2006 private release ''Extraordinary''.

The album contains ten tracks of instrumental Heavy Prog, where the music is driven mostly by powerful grooves, spacey, intense synthesizers and solid drumming.Muranen's compositions are based on his heavy guitar riffing and the more elaborate solos, while he also does a good job as a keyboard performer.His dynamic guitar playing is always supported by sharp and flashy synths as well as some decent organ runs and virtuosic piano passages, which sometimes even take over the guitars, while the rhythm section seems to have also been executed in a studio basis.Unspectacular yet pretty tight drumming and a sense of light bass lines make the album sounding pretty close to a normal band.His first album though contains little to no suprises.All tracks seem to follow the same form of rhythmic and rich Instrumental Rock with an amazing balance between guitar- and keyboard-led textures, but the lack of diversity prevents the album from offering some trully magical moments.

This album takes a good grade, considering it is a debut and moreover a one man's effort.Solid instrumental music, that sometimes screams for a more fresh air of flexibility.Still I recommend it to all fans of instrumental adventures.