Vespero – By the Waters of Tomorrow

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Vespero is probably the finest progressive/psychedelic/space rock combination in the current Russian scene. If you like, you can introduce yourself to them on the third Progstravaganza compilation, on which we have put their track Daphne. By the Waters of Tomorrow is the third album by these Russians and compared to the previous two albums, Rito released in 2007 and Surpassing All Kings from 2009, the band shows a lot of progress.

Daphne opens the album and all of you who downloaded the recent Progstravaganza compilation will notice that the band does not fear exploring krautrock, along with with dalliances into prog and space rock.

Next up is Percious, which starts in a sort of post-rock/ambient way and after the 3rd minute, it develops into space rock with jazzy structured beats, enough to add another element to band’s ever growing palette of influences. Somewhere around the 5th minute the band brings up an oriental sound, bringing also a bit of spiritualism in their music, which is always welcome. The last two minutes of the song sound like the soundtrack to a movie about “space spiritualism”. I don’t know how much sense this makes, but the fact is that the band successfully delves into a movie soundscape, presenting also a visual image of their music.

That soundtrackesque atmosphere continues through Amaryllis, showing off a space depth through dark synth soundwalls at the beginning to a fuzzy space-krautrock kind of thing below. Interesting drumwork here, followed by spacey keyboards and FX’s, that’s what you may expect from this piece.

Gao Zült brings back the aforementioned orientalism and Eastern spirit, which is probably one of my favorite things in music, and because of that this track is my personal favorite off the album. Very atmospheric, dynamic – the guys employ the sound of violins with spacey keyboards and a real fuzz in the middle. But also there can be found bits of classic improvised prog rock led by keyboards and aside that all, in the closing part of the song, folksy violins. This song stuck is my favorite part of the album.

But no time to stop, the band goes further with Tall Tree, which brings a traditional prog rock instrument to the fore. Of course I’m talking about the mellotron. This monumental instrument builds up this song, which is another amotspheric piece, with calmness as a deception. The melodiousness is gained with guitar solo in a Pink Floyd vein that goes wild in its second turn at the end of the song.

Things get messed up a bit with Punto Fijo, an excellent psychedelic-progressive rock mixture with great spacy synths to complete the image. After an energetic opening follows misty space rock middle part, after which things get fuzzier again in the last two minutes.

Pavane Lacryme gets the tempo down with its beautiful melody made up of mellotron, synths, rather easy drumming and violin. This one seems as the most emotional song off the record and it is another favorite of mine.

Another middle tempo structured piece comes in the shape of Seagulls Sing (When it Rains), a heavenly colored track that uses vocal harmonies as another instrument, but also flutes, setting once again a course towards a proggier sound.

The closing Aurora Borealis is the longest track on the album and a very good finisher, deepening the band’s tendency towards more space-o-cosmic sound here with folksy touch of violin again.

As a conclusion, what we’ve got here is a very nice blend of progressive, psychedelic, space and krautrock with jazzy and folksy structures. At any moment you do not have a feeling that you are listening an album of an underground band, what I am sure tells enough about the quality of this record. Highly recommended!

Tracklist:

01. Daphne

02. Percious

03. Amaryllis

04. Gao Zült

05. Tall Tree

06. Punto Fijo

07. Pavane Lacryme

08. Seagulls Sing (When it Rains)

09. Aurora Borealis

Line-up:

* Ivan Fedotov – drums, percussion

* Arkady Fedotov – bass, melodica (2, 4), bass synth (3, 7), oscillations

* Alexander Kuzovlev – guitar, electronic manipulations

* Alexei Klabukov – keyboards, mellotron

* Vladimir Belov – cello (5, 5, 6, 8), keyboards (2, 3)

with:

* Alisa Coral – bubbles, waves, oscillations (1, 6)

* Valentin Rulev – violin (4, 7, 9)

* Natalya Dosoyevskaya – flute (8)

* Elena Belozyorova – voice (8)

Links:

Vespero @ MySpace

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