A Billion Years Of Solitude (Galileo-Records, 2013)
A Billion Years Of Solitude, the new album by Dutch progressive rock band Sky Architect is deeply inspired by antique Science Fiction and deep space. The album intro on track 1 ‘The Curious One’ clearly points in this direction with synthesizer melodies and spacy effects that recall the soundtracks of 1950s sci-fi flicks. The vintage sounds morph into beautiful symphonic rock loaded with great mellotron, synths, vocals and guitars, as well as exciting tempo changes. The last part of this long suite consists of a harder-edged excursion into neoprog.
Tracks 2 and 3, ‘Wormholes (The Inevitable Collapse of the Large Hadron Collider)’ and ‘Tides’ have a hard rock and grungy edge.
Prog rock returns with ‘Elegy of a Solitary Giant’ where Sky Architect presents its formidable rhythm section along with a wonderful mix of guitars, mellotron and vocals. The first part of the piece has a strong connection to early King Crimson. Later, the band returns to hard rock mode.
Track 5, ‘Jim’s Ride to Hell’ is a mix of odd time signatures, shredding, prog rock and heavy rock.
‘Revolutions’ redirects the band again towards superb symphonic progressive rock, with some of the best vocal and guitar work on the album.
The last cut, ‘Traveller’s Last Candle,’ is a serpentine composition titled with gorgeous keyboard and guitar moments, along with more of the generic hard rock.
The band features Tom Luchies on vocals, guitars; Wabe Wieringa on guitars; Rik van Honk on keyboards (mellotron, grand piano, Hammond organ, Rhodes piano, clavinet, Moog synth, Wurlitzer), flugelhorn, trumpet, backing vocals; Guus van Mierlo on bass; and Christiaan Bruin on drums, backing vocals. Maartje Dekker appears on Traveller’s Last Candle playing wineglasses.
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