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Corvus Stone - Corvus Stone CD (album) cover

CORVUS STONE

Corvus Stone

 

Crossover Prog

3.80 | 181 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Evolver
Special Collaborator
Crossover & JR/F/Canterbury Teams
4 stars I will admit that I understand why some here are not impressed with this album. Many of the tracks sound more like rough outlines for jamming than actual finished compositions. But the jamming is outstanding. Colin Tench is a chameleon of the guitar. He glides easily through any stile, from southern rock, psychedelic whirls, light avant-garde, and even some full fledged prog. Pasi Koivu plays some mean keyboard. When he hits the Hammond he recreates the classic 60's and 70's sound and updates it with ferocious licks. And bassist Petri Lemmy Lindström is a joy to this bassman's ears.

Compositionally the band is all over the map, which to me is not at all a bad thing. Koivu is responsible for the majority of the pieces, and seems comfortable working in a number of styles. Highway To Emptiness and Moron Season strongly remind me of Phil Manzanera's 801. October Sad Song and You're So Wrong bring Traffic to mind. The self titled Corvus Stone begins like an homage to Frank Zappa's Black Napkins, but evolves into a unZappa-like electro space jam.

The best tracks, to me, are the more experimental pieces. On Pilgrims, Tench has a sound similar to David Torn, which is appropriate as the piece leads into JussiPussi, which in a slight way sounds like something John Zorn (with whom Torn sometimes plays) might have written. The progginess peaks with a suite of tracks that begins with an unnecessary drum solo (TheRusty Wolff Attack) that moves into a Floydian piece (Lost And Found, where Koivu's synths imitate Richard Wright at his best), and then into Scary Movie, which at times seems to be quoting King Crimson's Deception Of The Thrush (as well as a brief passage from Fleetwod Mac/Peter Green's Oh Yeah) and the wonderful Cinema.

So don't take the appearance of simplicity of the album as a flaw. The musicians are so good here that they raise the album to near masterpiece levels. I highly recommend it for the soundtrack of a long drive (that's how I learned to appreciate it).

Evolver | 4/5 |

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