ALL TOMORROWS

'All Tomorrows' - Daymoon (7/10)

Although tracing its origins back to the United States and Britain, the progressive rock movement has since moved on to infect the underground of virtually every country on Earth. Portugal and Spain were far from the last countries to be infected, although I cannot say I have heard much music of the progressive variety from these nations before. The truth is, while 'regressive rock' band Daymoon are considered a Portuguese ensemble, this is very much an album that is coming from a great many places, in more ways than one. Produced by Andy Tillison of the well known band The Tangent, Daymoon's official debut 'All Tomorrows' borrows many conventions of a great many styles, and does most of them an impressive justice. At the same time though, Daymoon's variety is countered somewhat by the fact that while the band does a great job at emulating the sounds of others, a lack of individual identity to their sound can make for a less immediate listen than what I may have hoped for.

Daymoon is the brainchild of one Fred Lessing, a man of Portugal who has released five albums before this, although he playfully and perhaps all-too modestly labels his previous work as 'utter crap'. The music here has all of its origins with Lessing, although the actual execution of 'All Tomorrows' comes from a great many places. If I am not mistaken, Fred took the tracks and sent them out to many different musically networked friends of his, who recorded their parts and sent their contributions back, creating a piece of the whole. This is a very interesting and modern way of putting together an album, although as one might expect, the album lacks a sense of coherence from the number of contributors. There are parts here that are taken straight out of jazz fusion, followed by a song that sounds every bit a piece of early Genesis canon, and plenty of small, but none-so-subtle homages to classic prog rock bands. All of these are bound together by Andy Tillison's somewhat underwhelming production of the album, but there is still the sense that while most of these tracks are well written and performed, the slight variances in quality and wide changes in style along the way make the album feel less and less like a start-to-finish work, and more like a compilation of songs from a bunch of different, albeit similar bands.

Although the album structure is a bit weak and even hodge-podge, the music itself is very well done, even if it is largely derivative from identifiable sources. There is a great cross section of some of the best prog rock sounds here, including quirky jazz fusion, epic symphonic prog, and even some moments towards the end of the album that sound like they could have been plucked from the early Pink Floyd work. The singer here is fairly good, although its clear that he tries to blend in with whatever style the band is playing at the time; largely alternating between a distinctly British accent like Peter Gabriel's, or a more typically Portuguese inflection. The vocals are never particularly brilliant, but work well, and especially in the parts with the Genesis-sounding prog instrumentation, the vocals really help to give the added authentic feel of 70's prog rock to the band's sound. Personally, the regressive rock direction is not my thing- being someone who tends to go for the darker or more truly progressive side of prog- but for what Daymoon was trying to accomplish with the sound here, they did it quite well.

A fine album with many merits and great collaborations across the board, Daymoon is a very promising project in the sense that with the sheer variety that Lessing and company sport here, I can only imagine what the next batch of songs from their tentative next recording will be. A promising introduction for this band!

Daymoon from Portugal!

It is great to see that the progressive rock realm has expanded its boundaries since some decades ago, reaching places that seemed not to have a prominent scene. One of those places may be Portugal, a country that has some known artists such as Jose Cid or Banda do Casaco, but also some newer and talented acts such as Egyptian Kings, or Daymoon. This latter band led by Fred Lessing released in this 2011 a wonderful album entitled "All Tomorrows", which has the collaboration of some great prog rock musicians like Hugo Flores and Andy Tillison.

This album features ten compositions that make a total time of 65 minutes. It opens with "All Tomorrows" which starts with a bombastic and happy-like mood and rhythm, full of keyboards, great bass lines and harmony vocals. It is a wonderful opener because its intensity clearly helps the listener getting interested in the music. After two minutes there is a short passage of quietness, which seconds later disappears in order to return to the original sound. Later there is a cool moment with acoustic and electric guitars, very sympathetic; until the song finishes with a beep, and an apparent death.

"TrascendenZ" is a wonderful short track that shows the eclecticism of the band, who are mislabeled here as a Crossover act. Here we can listen to a great mixture of symphonic prog, with some fusion provided by winds and even some heavier passages. It leads to "Human Again", which grabs some cultural pieces from different countries, I don't know, but here I can listen to Portugal, Spain and France, for instance. This is a very complete, challenging and well-crafted composition, full of changes and elements that show the band's compositional skills, and their capacity to take us to their realm. This is one of my favorite pieces here.

"Marrakech" is the shortest track, and it has a very mellow sound, with piano, flute and spoken words in the first moments. Later it changes and creates another rollercoaster of sounds. I love how in just two minutes and a half they can put several images, elements and sounds. As you can imagine, a mid-east sound can be found here. The next track is "Sorry", which in the other hand, is one of the longest compositions. The first minutes are alike, with acoustic guitar and gentle vocals, who little by little are being accompanied and complemented by the other instruments, such as drums, bass, winds and keyboards. The instrumental parts are great, sharing peace and charm in one hand, intrigue and expectations in the other. After five minutes it changes (they are constantly changing, in a positive way), vocals appear and create a nice sound. And there it goes, with instrumental, then vocals, then instrumental passages. Great song.

"Bell Jar" starts with a keyboards and flute as background, creating some tension in the ambience, but later that disappears and a new structure appears with acoustic guitars, vocals and electronic drums. Once again, they feed us with a good variety and diversity of sounds, rhythms, nuances. "First Rain" starts again with acoustic guitar and a charming sound, later vocals enter and complement this laid-back track, whose second part has some kind of soft spacey ambience. When we don't expect it, all of a sudden "Arklow" starts with a heavier and more intense sound that could perfectly fit in a film or a play, at least I imagine some things while listening to it. Later lyrics enter and little by little a structure is being built up. Here I like a lot the guitars and keyboards specially, though all the members make a great work.

"News from the Outside" has a mellow and soft sound, with a wonderful keyboard background and a charming voice and rhythm. Two minutes later a guitar riff appears, and then the song continues as it began, with that laid back orientation that is easy to enjoy. The final track of the album is the longest one, its name is "The Sum" and with thirteen minutes length, the band offers one more time a proof of eclecticism, rhythmical and emotional changes, a wonderful diversity of elements and instruments such as flute or clarinet, harmony vocals, keyboards, etc. There are different passages on this song, like chapters of a TV series, that are being told one by one, but that together complete the puzzle. This is a well crafted song, intelligently composed and wonderfully performed. They chose the most complex and maybe best track to finish the album, and it was the right choice.

I am pleased with Daymoon's album, and though I would not say it is a masterpiece, I bet the band may reach higher levels in the future. Recommendable without a doubt!

Enjoy it!

DAYMOON is the creative vehicle of Portuguese composer and instrumentalist Fred Lessing, a solo project he's had on the side for some time, although never officially releasing any of the albums he's made over the years. This changed with "All Tomorrows", however, a production several years in the making where many of Fred's musical friends lent a helping hand in the recording, mix and production department. The album was initially released digitally on the bandcamp website in 2011, and the CD edition came courtesy of the Russian label MALS Records towards the end of the year.

"All Tomorrows" is a pleasant and promising debut from Fred Lessing's Daymoon project. With a fair amount of stylistic diversity throughout, especially the inclusion of folk music elements, but with an overall sound that should appeal to fans of late 70's Pink Floyd more than anything. The lead vocals will make this disc something of a hit and miss affair to some, and as such those who find this part of a CD to be vitally important might want to approach this one with a bit of caution.

Although this is a debut album, the roots of the band actually go back a long way and this could easily have ended up being classified as a solo album from Fred Lessing (guitars, flute, recorders, keyboard, vocals, and ethnic percussion). He has been joined on this by André Marques (acoustic and electric drums, and incidental vocals), Adriano Dias Pereira (clarinet, flute, melodica, keyboard, sax, percussion, and vocals), Paulo Catroga, (keyboards and vocals), Nino Mar (bass guitar), Joana Lessing (keyboard, percussion, and vocals, Rodrigo Caser (electric guitar), Mark Guertin (bass guitar) and Davis Raborn (drums). Although there are a lot of musicians, and I did read somewhere that they added their parts and sent them back to Fred to weave into the musical whole as opposed to recording together, the feeling is that of a group as opposed to a project.

Musically this is heavily rooted in the Seventies, with large elements of classic Genesis and Gryphon, but it is somewhat let down by the vocals. They are somewhat of an acquired taste and that combined with the very regressive prog sound results in an album that shows promise but ultimately doesn't really deliver. Much has been made in some quarters about the fact that this band is from Portugal which isn't normally thought of as a prog hotbed, but personally it doesn't matter so much to me as to where a band are from as it does to how they sound. This isn't a bad album, but having written about it I somehow can't see myself playing it again.

Daymoon is a Portuguese project led by Fred Lessing. The project started out after Fred, that played in the yearly 80's in some Prog bands, organised a decent home studio and started to record his ideas in late 90's and recorded 3 demos like that. Only in 2009 Fred started to record a proper debut album for Daymoon All Tomorrows (2011) was then released as a digital download and later on it was released by the Russian label MALS in a CD form.

MALS is a label that we overlook very often. Being a Russian label and having their native country as their main focus, sometimes we don't really get their releases, however, they have a huge catalog with many excellent albums.

All Tomorrows (2011) was co-produced , mixed and mastered by Andy Tillinson (The Tangent, PO90). He also plays on a couple of tracks on the album.

'All Tomorrows' is the first track and has nice vocals by Hugo Flores. In the follow up, the instrumental 'TrancendenZ' we have many interesting parts and twists. But it is the third track, 'Human Again' that really caught our attention with its Mike Oldfield kind of sound. I have to mention here Luís bass line, amazing bass sound on this track! Fred Lessing sings on this particular track (as in a few others) and it's quite a good vocal line, but what I like most is the unconventional way that the song follows.

'Marrakech' sounds a bit 'demo' for my taste and 'Sorry' follows the same path, but the second one has interesting passages that had the helping hand of members of the band Isildur's Bane. 'Bell Jar' has a very nice beginning and great vocals by Mark Lee Fletcher, but the electronic input that Andy Tillinson gave to the song pretty much kills it for me. 'First Rain' has a great acoustic intro and good vocals by Hugo Flores. A very good track with a pastoral feeling. 'Arklow' is a smaller track (in terms of quality) in my opinion and 'News From The Outside' has direct influence from Pink Floyd with very good vocals, once again, by Mark Lee Fletcher.

The final track from All Tomorrows (2011) is 'The Sum', the longest track on the album with 13'45. Its intro is pure Gentle Giant and has a lot of influence from the Italian bands too, especially because of the saxophones . 'The Sum' has many different parts and it's the certainly the best track on the album for me.

One thing I liked about All Tomorrows (2011) is the fact that every song has a small text explaining every song. I have always liked this detail on booklets of cds.

All Tomorrows (2011) is a good first album but it feels as a patchwork in many moments. Maybe the recordings, maybe the production, not really sure what's the reason that made me feel like that with this particular album. But Daymoon has good compositions, which is the main thing in the business. That's why I'm eager to soon review their next album Fabric Of Space Divine (2013) that I already have here with me!

3.5 stars if I could.

(Originally posted on progshine.net)