| The
Review |
In amongst all the growing genres and sub-genres within
the progressive rock realm is one called World-Prog. This
is a style that works within the typical progressive rock
format but is predominantly more ethnic in nature than rock
oriented. With that set-up, I’d like to introduce a band called
Amarok and their seventh release entitled Sol de Medianoche.
This is a band formed in 1990 by Robert Santamaria, a paleontologist
and still the primary composer for the group. He has surrounded
himself by a host of musicians incorporating musical styles
and instruments from around the world.
The compositions on Sol de Medianoche are mostly multi-part
affairs with a dominant acoustic ethnic flavor. Incorporating
instruments such as Saz, Kanun, Santur, Dulcimer, Autoharp
and Didgeridoo along side the more traditional instruments
of guitar, keyboards, bass and drums gives Amarok a very classical
inspired folk sound. There are many moments where one traditional
instrument or another is given time for a brief solo, be it
percussive or stringed. Three of the tracks are over ten-minutes
and a couple more are seven or eight minutes giving these
compositions lots of room to meander through various musical
shifts both in terms of time and tempo as well as mood. But
again the structure is less rock and more classical in nature.
The sounds of flute, fiddle and dulcimer provide a certain
jauntiness, evident in a track like “Hermits” while the CD’s
opening song “Sephiroth” tends to me more moody with soft
percussion and delicious Mellotron strings in the background.
Adding to the ethnic mix is the short (1:13) piece called
“Xiongmao” which has a very traditional Chinese sound. Then
we go back into something a little more proggy and jazzy in
track four called “Wendigo” with some interesting organ, sax
and Mellotron all playing off each other. Over all the music
of Sol de Medianoche moves softly and slowly in different
directions many times with a very acoustic feel giving lots
of space. One moment you’ll be listening to some nice Mellotron
strings with just a simple percussion supporting it, which
then slides effortlessly into a somewhat more jazzy section.
Where there are vocals they are provided by Marta Segura and
mostly in sung in Spanish.
Sometimes it’s easy to get caught in a rut listening to
the same style of music day-in and day-out, after all we each
have our favorites. But I think it’s good to look outside
that comfort zone. It’s not even necessary that we like everything
to the same level. What’s important is that we expose our
musical pallet to new and different things. That’s what Amarok
does for me. It shows me a completely different side of the
progressive genre. If you’ve never heard the music of Amarok,
you need to have at least one of their CDs in your collection
and Sol de Medianoche is the perfect place to start.
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