WATERTOUCH

Sweden is well known for delivering for more than 40 years great and yet unknown prog bands, one of them is Watertouch from more recent years. They release one album in 2005 and then gone into oblivion. We never went to the moon is the name of the album and their only one so far. The album sounds ok, in places even great, being almost entirely instrumental with sporadic voice passages on couple of pieces. To this release sounds anything but folk as is presented, this is light jazz rock with some fusion elements added here and there with plenty of improvisation elements added in song struncture. The forte pieces are Maybe I'm a Muslim,Funeral procession from Äselby or the title track, very nice interludes between musicians, nice guitar parts and good keyboards. I'm not so atached by the voice of Patrick Salin, definetly a low point of the album , even is not bad is far from being intresting. Overall a decent album where the instrumental sections are by far the main atraction, but I don't considered to be a very original or at least very intresting release. 3 stars is best I can give.

Watertouch are a modern prog band hailing from the same Swedish town as Anekdoten, but the comparisons end there. This is their only release to-date, and apparently comes after some years of legal wrangling, over what I’m not sure.

It would be a bit of a stretch to call this prog folk music, but I suppose the rustic brass and intricate though soft-rock leaning guitar work in their lengthy instrumentals could cause some to make that leap. There are also a couple places on the album with almost jig-like arrangements, though these are almost entirely manufactured by the organ playing of keyboardist Per Wiberg.

The two most interesting things about this band are 1) the almost complete lack of any information on the web or in popular music magazines about the band; and 2) the self-amusement evident in the naming of their songs. Names like “Maybe I’m a Muslim”, “Waltz for backtax”, “Just before Cleavage Hill” and the lengthy "The Burning of my Ashes" have almost nothing to do with the songs behind them, or at least they don’t seem to; it’s hard to tell since nearly the entire album is instrumental. The sound is a combination of the best Jon Lord keys laid down for Deep Purple, some light jazz, the occasional folk nod and several bouts of improvisational guitar with sporadic percussive accompaniment.

“Waltz for backtax” especially sounds like an eighties wine bar jazz tune, while “Just before Cleavage Hill” is probably the closest to an actual folk-leaning track. The title tune is completely awash in organ and piano, and actually sounds as if it might have been recorded and/or mixed apart from the rest of the album.

Guitarist Patrick Salin belts out some highly-inflected vocals only a couple times on the album. He’s a decent guitarist, whatever that says about his singing, so it’s probably a good thing that most of the album is instrumental.

There’s not a whole lot to say about these guys really, partially because there is so little information about them aside from this self-released album. Decent music, nothing overly special though. If you are into soft jazz or modern, mature prog bands like Salem Hill, Proto-Kaw or Ezra you might find these guys interesting. Otherwise I’d say you won’t be too impressed. A decent album so three stars, but probably mostly appealing to those of us in the over-forty set.

peace