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Rozmainsky & Mikhaylov Project - For The Light CD (album) cover

FOR THE LIGHT

Rozmainsky & Mikhaylov Project

 

Eclectic Prog

3.83 | 31 ratings

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Neu!mann
Prog Reviewer
3 stars The debut album by the new Rozmainsky & Mikhaylov Project (better abbreviated as RMP) makes no secret of its band members' admiration for classic Pink Floyd. One of the better tracks is even titled "A Dedication to the Floydian Sun", on which the guitar of Vladimir Mikhaylov (the 'M' of the R&M Project) references the slow bass ostinato made famous by Roger Waters when he Set his Controls for the Heart of the same local star.

It's a promising first effort by veteran musicians perhaps still learning how to coordinate their skills within a new group. When it works, the album soars: in the lilting "Keep No Thou Silence" (all the track titles are pure poetry), and throughout the atmospheric "Floydian Sun" tribute. But some otherwise good music is sadly undermined by the occasional plodding tempo, keeping the album earthbound when it should be gliding weightless toward the empyrean ideal named in the title track and elsewhere ("For the Light"; "Wounded By the Lack of Light'; so forth).

You can hear that divide in the album's first notes, when the ghostly prologue suddenly collides headlong into a clumsy backbeat. That initial haunting refrain reappears in various forms across the album's 48-minutes, providing welcome thematic continuity on a more or less instrumental collection: the only vocals are some lovely wordless singing by Anastasia Mikhaylova.

The keyboards and guitar of R and M are dominant, of course. But several effective secret weapons are hidden in the band's arsenal: the sultry bass clarinet of Leonid Perevalov (ex-Yojo, which I hope doesn't mean that excellent band is now defunct), and the occasional gusli, an evocative Slavic zither played by guest star Natalia Fyodorova.

According to their lofty mission statement: "The fundamental goal of the band and its debut album is to open new musical worlds that cannot be analyzed in the rational manner." Which immediately excludes my own petty efforts to do exactly that, so I'll quit here.

But I have to applaud the band's musical idealism, and hope they continue striving to reach those irrational other worlds. Even when, as suggested by their first recorded attempt, the goal is just beyond their reach.

Neu!mann | 3/5 |

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