THE LAMPLIGHTER

Two steps forward, five steps back.

After the brilliant 2010 release The Way, I had great anticipation and expectations for The Lamplighter.

The Lamplighter continues with the outstanding compositions and excellence in musicianship. To me, Anima Mundi (Roberto Diaz and Virginia Peraza are listed as the primary songwriters) have improved with their compositions. Where some of the songs on The Way seemed a little overly grandiose and maybe a little too sweet in places, the songs on The Lamplighter while not abandoning the established Anima Mundi style, manage to work in a bit more variety in arrangements and moods, and seem to reduce the layers of keyboards to let the music breathe a bit more. This is for me the two steps forward, and if this was the only change from The Way, it would lead to an outstanding rating.

The primary instrumental core remains the same as on The Way -- Peraza, Diaz, Corredera and Govin. Their work is excellent, highly skilled, great voicings and enough technical chops to keep it interesting.

There are some really great, inspired instrumental sections to this album. For example The Endless Star segment of the Tales from the Endless Star suite is fantastic. I even like the inclusion of excerpts from Toccata (Ginastera's 1st Piano Concerto), which could have been cheesy but they pull it off.

But there was a personnel change between The Way and The Lamplighter. Carlos Sosa is no longer the lead vocalist. His vocals were great, even if they were maybe a little sappy in places. On The Lamplighter, Emmanuel Pirko-Farrath assumes the vocal duties. I know this is probably a matter of personal taste, but the vocals on The Lamplighter are a major, major disappointment for me. Pirko-Farrath's range is very limited, there are serious pitch problems throughout, and his vocals lack the emotion of Sosa's. There is also a good deal of accent to the English lyrics, which normally doesn't bother me, but I guess combined with the other issues just seems to make it worse. To me, the vocals are a big negative on The Lamplighter, thus five steps back.

The production and engineering are great, nice and clear so we can hear everything that's happening. The mix is first rate, although I'd prefer that the vocals were mixed lower -- not just because of what I said above, but because I think they obscure the support instrumentals. The mastering is a problem, unfortunately. The levels are pumped way too high for this genre (the RMS is -11.4 for cripes sake, so there's like 7 dB of limiting and compression being applied). Fortunately a proper limiter was used, so I don't see a lot of clipped off peaks, but the excessive compression still hurts the clarity a lot (a mild pass through SeeDeClip Pro restored the lost dynamics and improved the sound, if you're into that kind of thing).

Overall, if you like symphonic prog in general, Anima Mundi is well worth checking out. They are one of the shining stars from the Caribbean/Central/South America region. I would personally recommend starting with The Way, or even Jagannath Orbit, not here though, although that pains me to say since the instrumentals on The Lamplighter deserve to be enjoyed. Anima Mundi produces a kinder, gentler prog with positive themes and more pleasant sounding compositions, which may not be everyone's cup of tea, but have always done so with a high level of composition and musicianship.

Maybe the vocals will not be an issue for you. I might eventually get used to them and be able to appreciate the rest of the album more, but right now after a half dozen listens, the vocals really detract from my enjoyment.

So, sadly, this is a flawed gem for me. Like I said, if they redid this album with Sosa, or any really good vocalist, this would probably be a five star rating for me (maybe something like 4.75 rounded up). As it stands with the vocals, I just can't give it more than a 3 star rating (I go between something like a 2.75 to maybe as high as a 3.5, but rounded to a 3). Perhaps there is a story behind the change in vocalist and why Pirko-Farrath joined, but I'm confused why, after establishing such a high standard on their two prior albums, they would release an album with substandard vocals?

Anima Mundi...World Of Soles...beautiful soles could be with the addition of this beautiful music

Another inspired album of this Caribbean band

...Who could really tell that a band of Cuba with al the caribbean environment...salsa music...will be so good composing and playing symphonic prog rock....normally this good bands come from more freezing countries of Europe or the North America and environment inspire this kind of music.....and all the influences are from those countries.

So this is the best symphonic prog rock album i have listened in years...

So beautiful songs...so good instrumentation ...really you will remember the operas primas of the old symphonic prog rock .

This band...this album...will always be an excellent addition to prog rock...and particularly this album a masterpiece

ANIMA MUNDI The Lamplighter : GREAT album for any PROG music fan! Very nice CD with magic artworks from famous artist Ed Unitsky invites listeners to discover the new music world: it's something new between Camel (Rajaz) and The Flower Kings' ballads and it's really NEW step for the band! It's original, with typical Anima Mundi's music features (in harmonies, for instance), and not a "clone" of the Great PROG Ancestors' style - but you can also hear Yes, Genesis mood there... Also - very good and serious echo of Classical music: from Prokofiev - Romeo and Juliet - Dance of the knights to Edward Grieg - Peer Gynt. Oh - and there isn't any 'Cuban Rumba-Mambo-Cha-Cha-Cha' at the album from musicians of this country - only Classic Epic Prog! (lol) If to speak more seriously... This album gives you a very big (and rare now!) treasure: beautiful bright melodies that you can remember at once! For sure, with great acoustic and el guitars by Roberto Diaz (he has the same sort of melodic energy that... Steve Hackett, I would dare to say this after all AM's albums and live shows !) and... I love MOOG solos and "violins' pizzicato" moments (thanks, Virginia Peraza)! In general, pleasantly to notice a very "smart" arrangement of the album: sometimes flute notes, exactly when/where they MUST to be, sometimes drum's moment and bass' line... These things are important there, because all of them work on a whole impression that is 'GREAT' ! I enjoy new singer's voice very much as well - if you love John Wetton's/Greg Lake's style, - you will join to me and Emmanuel Pirko Farrath ;) Yeah, it's conceptual album in 2 parts, a classic PROG themes (Love, Light, Creation)... but deep and SINCERE lyrics SPEAK with the listener... again. Really good poetry in a way, maybe, of The Flower Kings' one. And again and again I want to say about MUSIC: there are many sweet and touching moments in the album, and I am especially glad to meet there powerful development of bright melodies that you've already remembered (they was before in vocal or guitar part for example). ...I want to play this such a beautiful album again and again, and I do it! Anima Mundi (Roberto Díaz, Virginia Peraza, Yaroski Corredera, José Manuel Govín, Emmanuel Pirko Farrath) - thank you very much for the best PROG emotions with "the Lamplighter" !

Majestic memorable masterpiece!

In my opinion, one of the best symphonic prog bands in the world today. I was a little concerned as to what this would sound like after I heard there would be a new vocalist on this album. Well, I have been listening to this cd non-stop since I received it, and I must say, once again, the band has not disappointed me.

Powerful, lush, and occasionally dark, this seems quite a divergence from their last masterpiece, "The Way", of a few years ago. The interplay between guitarist Roberto Diaz and keyboardist Virginia Peraza is fantastic as usual. The compositions are well written and performed to perfection. The new singer, Emmanuel Pirko-Farrath has a great voice which complements the music very well. He does sing with an accent. However, this does not detract from my listening experience.

All the melodies on the album are instantly memorable, but the ultimate highlights for me are "The Dream Child Behind the Mask", and the 10+ minute instrumental "Endless Star".

Will certainly be a top 5 album for me in 2013. Highly recommended.

The Lamplighter, takes an unmistakable turn in style towards the symphonic progressive spectrum. Again, this is an area that I have focused on in the past fifteen years and Anima Mundi plays the same trick with me; the album opens up the eyes and ears again towards symphonic progressiveness. Changing a band member, especially a singer, can be devastating to a band. Anima Mundi had to endure this at a bad moment when, as the recording of this new album was almost finished, their beloved singer Carlos Sosa announced that he had decided to leave. He was replaced by Emmanuel Pirko Farrath and recordings had to be redone. Emmanuel's voice is a bit different but blends perfectly with the music, thus avoiding any consequences of this severe change while listening. An amazing job, really. There are lamps that enlighten the deepest spaces of cosmos while another one lights up the skies of our heart. Hearts or Stars; Love enlighten them and along with them lights the magic world that surround us. By the lamplighter hand, we will have the opportunity of a journey through this magic world we breathe every single day. This ancient and mysterious character with a lamp comes to take us away into the wonder of life. This is a journey in a world of legend and magic, through a planet called Earth, human kind, a mother star we calls Sun, the meaning of existence and the Lamp of His Majesty Love, a world where the seemingly simplest things that surround and go with to us in daily life will acquire the magic and astonishing essence that only a lighted heart is able to see. So close your eyes because Anima Mundi and a symphonic orchestra will start to play in a concert hall tunes that will lead you to an ageless time into the tales from who lights the lamp that enlighten the world: The Lamplighter. The Lamplighter is an album that again shows Anima Mundi offering impressive and excellent compositions, brought to us with untainted passion. Lovely. Amazing. Enchanting. Recommended without any doubt. Will certainly be a top 5 album in 2013. 5 Star, Highly recommended.

I was really looking forward to the follow up of 'The Way', an album that stunned my senses rather surprisingly, not quite expecting a Cuban symphonic prog extravaganza to bowl me over. On first and second audition, I must concur with other reviewers who mentioned the rather odd vocals that grace this fresh release. Let's get one thing straight, the music is spectacular, stately and impossibly brilliant. Being multi-lingual, I appreciate anyone expressing themselves in some other language than their native tongue and I actually enjoyed previous vocalist Carlos Sosa whose accent was only slight but new singer Emmanuel Pirko-Farrath has no command of English whatsoever and sadly, what this does is that it distracts to the point of being too obvious. In view of German national Helmut Koellen's brilliant English language singing on Triumvirat's early albums, where he learnt phonetically to pronounce each lyric properly, I must criticize the choice of a singer who struggles so overtly. Sing in Spanish, hombre! You have a decent voice but mangled words are never enjoyable.

When the mood becomes instrumental, Anima Mundi are easily among the most technically proficient musicians out there, featuring a magnificent keyboardist in Virginia Peraza. She has a strong symphonic inclination by using a tremendous amount of mellotron, synthesizers, organ and piano colorations throughout the arrangements. Bassist Yaroski Corredera provides some expressive bottom ends and occasional runs that are truly defiant. The drums are expertly handled by Jose Manuel Govin, never an issue in Cuba where percussion is a state accepted religion. Guitarist and leader Roberto Diaz is a killer slinger, his searing leads and chugging riffs inspire with abandon and grace. The melodies are grandiose and kaleidoscopic, expertly entertaining and effortlessly complex. The poor vocals kill the joy, though. Unfortunately, they are not few and far between. On 'The Human House', one can plainly feel the ridiculousness of mispronounced words such as 'cam' instead of 'come'. Sorry, but it's unavoidable and they linger like a sour aftertaste. Yet elsewhere on this short track, the playing is superb, go figure!

The pain is best expressed by the woeful rendition of the lyrics on 'His Majesty love', its torture when the words do not even make any sense and the delivery suffers accordingly. The finest moments on this disc is the all instrumental 'The Return-Part1', with its neo- medieval sheen and the bombastic epic segue 'Endless Star' and both are jewels of the very highest order. The latter in particular runs for a good 10 minutes and showcases the immense talent at hand, Peraza doing some masterful work in arranging this colossus of sound and fury. Diaz shows off delirious electric guitar technique that is just off the wall brilliant. The rhythm section just cooks up a tropical storm of musical delight.

Roberto, please invite Carlos back or re-record with someone who has mastered a language (any one of your choice, even Kobaian!) and I will anoint this with 5 cigars. Cover by the amazing Ed Unitsky only deepens my sorrow, for it's a truly stellar package.

3.5 berlitz lessons

Anima Mundi is a band out of Cuba that plays wonderful symphonic prog rock, so I was extremely excited when they sent me a download of their latest album, "The Lamplighter". I was slightly wary, I do admit. Their previous album, "The Way", is one of my all-time favorite albums. The problem is that the vocalist, Carlos Sosa, from their first few albums is no longer with them, and so I always get a little worried when this happens. He just so happens to have one of my favorite voices. The new singer, Emmanuel Pirko-Farrath, is definitely different. Let me explain how this affects the album.

If there's one thing that Anima Mundi can do flawlessly, it's create incredible instrumental passages. Virginia Peraza is most certainly one of my favorite keyboardists, and one of the best in the business, too. She has an incredible way of creating keyboard lines that are bobbing, spacey, epic, sublime, and unexpected all at the same time. On this album, she is no different. In fact, I'd say she goes out on a limb a few times, but always succeeds. The guitarist, Roberto Diaz, is also a magician with his instrument. Soulful solos by the bucketful are the name of the game, and an almost exploratory vibe is felt throughout the album. Again, drummer Jose Govin and bassist Yarroski Corredera impress with their performances, too. This group of musicians are an amazing unit that works like a well-oiled machine.

Yet, with the addition of the new vocalist, I can't help but be slightly disappointed. Emmanuel has a good voice that is nearly the opposite of Carlos'. While Carlos had huge range and a soaring style that left my knees quaking, Emmanuel has more of a rich, mellow sound that feels almost jazzy at times. This is okay, but I have three problems with it. First of all, Emmanuel (as has been pointed out by other reviewers) does not have a commanding control of English. His enunciation is very poor at times, and he forgets parts of speech at times, too. This becomes distracting, thought I do admit it is not as bad as I feared it would be. It is there, though. Second, his voice does not fit the music. Anima Mundi is all about soaring melodies and spacey vibes, but Emmanuel's voice doesn't fit this mold at all. Like I said, he jazzy, not proggy. Lastly, I feel that the vocal melodies have suffered. Carlos was always taking the incredible music and blowing it through the roof with his pitch perfect, stunning vocal passages. Emmanuel seems to get by, just barely. The vocal melodies come off as awkward to the point where you just want him to be quiet so we can get back to the fantastic music. I don't say this to be cruel: I just want to be honest.

Overall, though, this is still an excellent album. In all honesty, it features probably only 25% vocals, so the disappointing vox don't drag the entire album down with them. The music is still inspired, and the theme of human hearts as interconnected lamps of love and enlightenment is intriguing. But I hope Emmanuel can work on his voice and on his English. I think he has promise, but I just don't know how he can compete with his predecessor. All in all, however, this is a great album still.

Anima Mundi is a band that comes from Cuba. This fact alone would be enough to make you curious, and honestly, you should. Anima Mundi is a good band that's been around for over a decade and their new album The Lamplighter (2013) is their 4th. I was indeed curious about the band, I kind of missed their 'boat' along the way. I've listened to their debut album Septentrión (2002) but completely missed their next two albums: Jagannath Orbit (2008) and The Way (2010).

Now Anima Mundi has a new vocalist Emmanuel Pirko-Farrath and this is a fact that could make them even better. But to begin with I'll tell you that Eammanuel's vocals are... not there. His voice is far away from being a bad one, but the problem for me lies in his accent. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a snobbish kind of guy that looks for the 'perfect english'. Being from a country that doesn't have English as its main language (Brazil) I struggle myself to not have a heavy accent. The problem isn't that, very often bands comes from different places with singers with a bit of accent and that's fine. In Anima Mundi's case is very hard to bear the accent and because of that the melody lines.

Now, when it comes to the music, The Lamplighter (2013) has everything correct. Symphonic Prog played with very good keyboards (the best feature on the album), good Gilmourish guitars, good bass lines and ok drumming. And as I was listening to the album I notice that is exactly that the biggest problem with The Lamplighter (2013), everything is 'correct' and 'good' but there's nothing on the album (with a few keyboard moments) that make me say 'oh yeah, now we're talking' or even get really excited about.

The 'Suite The Lamplighter' is nice and I particularly like the last song 'His Majesty Love'. Overall the feeling of 'ok, when they're going for more' stayed with me the whole time. Maybe it's not their kind of music, but I was always waiting for some challenge, for some more. And it never came. Maybe it's not MY kind of music, anyway, a good album, but not essential.

I just realized this band couple of months ago when a friend of mine recommended me to have listen to it. AT first I was not quite impressed with it as I found the mismatch which was quite obvious between the music and the vocal part at the beginning part of the album. This might be caused by my expectation the band would play something heavy as its name is quite similar with the opening track of Black Sabbath "Tyr" album called as Anno Mundi. I think the name has different meaning with the Black Sabbath one. Once I removed the image of heavy music then I started to appreciate the music even though still found the vocal is not quite powerful - not something prog, I think ...

The music of this album isa basically pure soft neo-prog music with long sustain keyboard solo and some guitar work in Floydian style. Obviously this is a concept album with major three movements and I started to enjoy the music as the second track The call and farewell song (6.20) unfolds. It's basically a typical soft or dragging neoprog with relatively slow tempo music. This is not something that I can enjoy day by day as I feel not having patience with its really slow movement of the music. I am not saying it's bad but I have to wait quite a long time to get the right passages. As I enjoy the music its entirety, I find the 7th track titles as Endless Star (10;38) is quite interesting. It's not because of the longest in term of duration, but I really enjoy how the music moves in ambient mode with long sustain keyboard work and stunning Floydian guitar work.

Overall, it's a good album from Cuba prog band Anima Mundi. The music is in the vein of something like Red Sand etc. Keep on proggin' ...!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

If you've got an itch for something that'll transport you back to the days of neo-prog, Anima Mundi's latest release, The Lamplighter, may be your ticket. These guys do a surprisingly good job at nailing a sort of Marillion vibe with some moments that even take you back to Gabriel-ish era Genesis, such as on "The Dream Child Behind the Mask." The structure of songs becomes a bit predictable overall, with a general focus on vocals and a sort of verse/chorus format, but this format seems slightly obscured (in a good way) by the dense atmosphere of synths (particularly the synth brass on songs like the quirky "The Call and Farewell Song" and "Endless Star," both of which additionally feature some piano work that feels very tone-poem- esque in nature. Additionally, Anima Mundi seems to have a knack for the haunting and ominous, as in the tron flutes opener to "On Earth Beneath the Stars," as well as the aforementioned "Endless Star." Some of these elements do get a bit overused, however, as is clear by the time we reach "The Human House." Luckily there are still some great moments on the record, such as the lovely folk/classical blend guitar motifs of "The Return Part 1″ and the variations on these by way of vocals in part two. Despite the fact that I'm not a huge fan of neoprog, I still enjoyed The Lamplighter due to the sort of serious feel of the album as a whole and perhaps the very dark moments which were very intriguing.