THE FINEST OF MIRACLES

Review #15 Ciccada is one of the most talented and promising bands in Greece right now. (In my opinion at least). I discovered them a few years ago, when they released their first album 'A Child in the Mirror'. While I was listening to that album I was surprised by their rather unique sound (for the Greek standards at least), which combines many different elements such as Folk, Jazz and Progressive Rock, just to name a few.

A couple of months ago, Ciccada released their second album 'The Finest of Miracles', which is better than their first one in everything. Better compositions, more "mature" sound, and a lot of guest musicians playing a huge variety of instruments, giving their music a beautiful "color". (I had the chance to meet the drummer Giannis Iliakis, and the mastermind behind the band Nikos Nikolopoulos, and I have to say that they are cool and interesting guys, but above all very good musicians).

As for the album, it includes 10 tracks and has a total running time of almost 45 minutes. There are 3 small tracks included, which can be characterised as "passages" between songs, and they are under 2.00 minutes long. All the rest are between 3.00 and 9.00 minutes in length.

The album's opening track is the dreamy instrumental 'A Night Ride' having as leading instruments the keyboards and the violin at the start, but there are more instuments added later on, such as the flute and guitar. Definitely one of the best songs here. With the second track 'Eternal' the band is presenting to the listeners their female singer Evangelia Kozoni, with the soft and beautiful voice. As for their influences, most probably are bands like: Gentle Giant, Jethro Tull, Camel etc, but you can't say that Ciccada are a "copy" of those bands. They have some elements from those bands in their music, yes, but they are combined in such a way that the final outcome sounds very personal. At the moment I got the album's in MP3 version, waiting for the release of the vinyl version which will probably come out in May.

I strongly recommend the album to those who can enjoy and appreciate an album with "dreamy" passages, beautiful melodies, and on many occasions complex compositions.

4 stars from me