Beam-Light - Beam-Light

Kev Rowland

ImageNow, somewhere in the shed is a box (well in fact there are many boxes), and in that particular box is this CD. But, as I don’t have the CD itself to hand and have no press release either I would normally turn to the internet for more information, but in this endeavour I have failed miserably. There seems to be virtually nothing out there on this  - I mean, I have tried the usual suspects (Sea of Tranquility, DPRP, Prog Archives, Rate Your Music, Last FM etc) but this 2008 (okay, I got that much from RYM) album seems to have passed everyone by, which is both a mystery and a real shame. The reason it hasn’t gained more plaudits is probably because this was released on the Polish label, Lynx Music. Now, they have released some great music over the years – most notably Milennium and of course the MLWZ triple CD compilation which every proghead must own – but even they have only written a few lines on their website, in Polish of course, on this album.

Why has this gone missing in action? It certainly isn’t down to the quality of the music, but probably more that it doesn’t really fit into pigeonholes. Certainly most progheads will say that this shouldn’t be considered as such, as it has more in common with Kate Bush and Tori Amos than Genesis and Gentle Giant – yet there is a combination of fragility and delicacy that I have found intriguing. The delicate female vocals are always at the edge, waiting to break and crack, and are always centre stage with a very restrained backing which could just be keyboards, gentle percussion or even a full band – but they are always in the background.

This is an album that needs to have full attention paid to it – unless it is placed centre stage it will just disappear and that would be a crime as this really is a wonderful piece of work. There is a strange melancholy, even when the music is upbeat, and it is compelling. The lyrics are in English, so there is no excuse for not trying to find out more about this superb album.

www.lynxmusic.pl
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