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Review:
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Solar are a young band from Russia that produce a splendiferous
blend of Nightwish symphonic power metal, Yes/Rick Wakeman
melodic prog and Asia classic rock. They are fronted by
the lovely Jana "Bembi" Lisunkova who has an outstanding
powerful expressive rock voice that cuts through the music
like a sabre, enhanced by the use of their own dramatic
native language and those rolling R’s. You get eight superbly
produced epics that effortlessly move back and forth between
the various gentler and heavier sections, packed full of
luxuriant orchestrations, Roman’s rippling keyboards, great
tunes and lovely instrumental passages. There are loads
of playful moments, a typical example being the beginning
of ‘Prayer’, making the whole album a rich, highly entertaining
and varied listening experience. ‘Last Set’ with its koto
and tom toms speeds up and down and changes tempo, a very
difficult trick to pull off successfully that they use several
times throughout the album, and drummer Dinja shows he can
really rattle around his kit. It is so refreshing to hear
an album that has not been over compressed like Revamp.
Compression is used to make sure that every part of a song,
both the gentler and heavier sections, is the same volume
so you can listen to it in the car or on the radio or on
iPod shuffle and it’s at least as loud as all the other
songs, the problem is the constant pounding on the ear drums,
experts reckon you can listen to at most 5 songs before
fatigue sets in. Instead Solar cleverly use loud and quiet,
the volume dropping and then WHOOMF!!!! they’re off, adding
tremendous dynamism and diversity to their sound. They’re
Myspace is http://www.myspace.com/solargroup
and website in Russian and some English is http://solarband.ru/news/
, it can be purchased through the Fono shop http://www.shop.fono.ru/
. What with Ghosthill, Sphinx and Solar, the Fono Russian
label seems some have some cracking bands on their books
just waiting to be discovered, another highly recommended
9 out of 10.
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