CELESTINA

Los Angeles-based act 17 Pygmies were a unique band back in early-80's, when multi-instrumentalist Philip Drucker (aka Jackson Del Rey) formed the group, that released four full-length albums until 1991, combining elements from Post-Punk, Proto-Alternative Rock and Pop.A fifteen year hiatus followed until Drucker reformed the group as the 17th Pygmy in 2006 with guitarist Jeff Brenneman, drummer Dirk Doucette and female singer/multi-instrumentalist Meg Maryatt.The original 17 Pygmies name returned in 2008 with the album ''Celestina'', released on Drucker's Trakwerx label.

''Celestina'' is a concept sci-fi album, based on the story of some astronauts getting high as they were exposed on pure oxygen, while exploring a giant gas nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia.Reasonably the album seems destined to include lots of spacey soundscapes, sonic textures and cosmic atmospheres, but this reputedly quite proggy release has only a flavor of pure Ambient Music, supported by some FLOYD-ian passages (when the sporadic guitars appear), psychedelic mannerisms and light Classical-influenced themes.The music is not bad as a result, the real problem is that this an extremely hypnotic work with hardly any memorable moment.One also wonders why two long tracks like the 12-min. ''V'' and the almost 10-min. ''VIII'' were composed at first place, containing little to no variations with only some notable guitar work on the second one.The monotonous motive is strongly present to all the pieces of the album, which are mainly built around spacey but weak synthesizers with little instrumental variety.Very dreamy, ethereal and calm music overall, that actually does exactly that to the listener, setting him into sleep and into his own world of dreams.

Again, this particular concept and the music supporting it are not neccesarilly a failure.But the listening becomes a non-listening with such relaxed textures and total abscence of diversity.Not recommended.

I understand that the music here is about creating a mood. The dreamy quality of the music and almost-entirely slow pace of the album put the listener in a certain headspace. It's very easy to zone out and start ignoring the music. Maybe that's what they intended - to send the listener on their own little trip.

With the exception of the track Celestina VIII, this entire album is pretty much a quiet, slow, two chord excursion. Time signatures remain in 4/4 throughout. Don't expect anything complex or jarring. Someone once described progressive rock as "music where you don't know what's coming next" and by that definition, this fails, unless you're like me and *expect* more than two chords to the song.

There are some instrumentals and some vocal tunes. Somehow having two lines of vocals per song repeated over and over is supposed to tell the story outlined in the liner notes. Maybe that's why it took three albums to tell the story?

The aforementioned track Celestina VIII is a bit different - it's faster and loud and noisy, but still just two chords.

Let's be clear - it's not bad. The performances are just fine - musicians know it's HARD to play that slow without rushing the tempo - and the vocals have a nice sound to them. Some variety wouldn't kill it, particularly how the keyboard player found a few synth patches they liked and used them the entire album. But is this progressive? No. This may be right up your alley and it isn't bad to put on in the background while doing something else, but I personally don't have the desire to listen to it ever again.