THE THREESUNNY LIGHT POWER

Composition 'The Threesunny Light Power' is the first ROZ VITALIS epic which does work for me. Although it's still keyboards with programmed drums there's almost no signs of bore: musical events come and go keeping my focus on the smooth mood changes. Also the music is brighter than anything they did before. The darkest parts are several organ chorale passages.

So, it's 20+ minutes of bright mid-paced and complex enough music. Well, it's good, rarely very good and nowhere near exceptional. Also then comes boring soundscape-only 'Astral mule'. Thanks god there's another good long track to restore the album's impression on me. 'Destroying the paradise of smiles' is a darker (in the vein of their previous albums) mid-paced composition with little to no soundscaping to disturb the flow from whipping up darker robotic mood. Close to be very good.

Also from 2004 is a three-track EP, the title song of which is 24 minutes long, so the EP is more than 35 minutes in total length as the other two songs are somewhat shorter. It is the same line-up, with a similar musical approach, and even the same vase of flowers on the cover as the album, and one can only imagine that the reason they weren't all on the same release is that that would have made it more than 100 minutes in length so would have meant a double CD release. On this EP Ivan is accompanied by Regentova and Polyakov on the epic, and then on the closer by Laskin, with the middle song being a solo keyboard piece.

"The Threesunny Light Power" could, and possibly should, have been on 'Das Licht Der Menschen' as it is such a direct continuation, but the other two numbers are quite different. These are far more keyboard-based with much less of a choral or baroque sound, and no woodwind or percussion (drums are programmed, which is readily apparent). This means the EP has some very different styles within it, and although I can see why they have been placed in this order, I would have probably gone 1,3,2 as musically that allows the transitions to make more sense. However, this is another great release from Roz Vitalis, and with their whole collection now easily available through Bandcamp (this has been listed as available for a minimum $1 USD) now could not be a better time to discover one of the great progressive bands from Russia.