SEEDS ON THE GROUND

China hasn't been the home to many well known progressive rock artists so far, for many reasons. Different cultural traditions, as well as a society that was pretty closed to the outside world for many years, means that I'm not even sure if rock music as such is popular there. Enter Cold Fairyland, a Chinese band proudly announcing themselves to be a progressive rock act, with a handful of releases to their name.

"Seeds on the Ground" is a release somewhat similar in style to Norwegian act Green Carnation and their album "The Acoustic Verses". The songs are all dominated by acoustic or acoustic sounding instruments, the bass provides a basic melody line, the guitars adds a slightly more complicated melody line harmonizing with the bass. Unlike aforementioned Green Carnation release vocals aren't a central element here though, instead violins and the traditional Chinese instruments Pipa and Ruan shares the dominating spot on these tunes, both of them adding a distinct folk-inspired and Chinese expression to compositions predominantly rock in style - although mellow in expression.

Good songs too, a few outstanding and the rest very good. Fans of mellow, progressive rock with influences from traditional Chinese music - or those who find this description interesting - have a release to check out here.