ALEATORIK SYSTEM

Two years after their debut Hans Joerg Schmitz'es King of Agogik return with a second album, ''Aleatorik system''.This time there's no Pantelis Petrakakis on bass, the instrument has been taken over by Schmitz himself.Instead he added Tobi Hampel to help him on guitars.

With this work Hans Joerg Schmitz prooves to be a competent multi-instrumentalist and composer, you will hardly ever think that drums is his main instrument.Just listen to his attempt on a 22-min. epic piece like ''The long March of the royal fifth'' and you'll be blown away by what this man came up.This is excellent and highly symphonic Neo Prog with some superb guitar and keyboard passages, including some Gregorian-like chants, atmospheric synths, grandiose bell sounds and dashes of Mellotron, lacking any vocal parts, but being extremely fluid at the very end, the lyrics would more propably ruin the final result, which is no less than solid, epic Prog Rock.The rest of the album is a mixture of harder moments, flirting more with Heavy Prog than symphonic attempts, and delicate Neo/Symphonic Prog.I would actually say that Schmitz'es drumming is the least favorable of all instruments in here, the musical perfection is all about his alternating elegant and punchy moves with some really cool keyboard and guitar deliveries.Imagine bits of PINK FLOYD, early IQ, KING CRIMSON and more Electronic/Symphonic bands like NETHERLAND DWARF or BACKYARDS to get a picture of the album.Of course there are a couple of weak moments in this quite long release, featuring rockier but rather dull moments, but fortunately some great symphonic arrangements with both bombastic and dreamy textures are waiting on the next corner.

Great, all instrumental stuff, you can feel that part of the intruments are rather programmed plus some nonsense jazzy and funky edges hurt its consistency, but the cool material is extremely solid, well-played and dynamic.Just listen to this man's talent on the long progressive efforts.Strongly recommended...3.5 stars.