The Gourishankar- 2nd hands
(Unicorn Digital)
The Gourishankar- 2nd hands
(Unicorn Digital)
From Aural Innovations #37 (Sep 2007)
The Gourishanker are a band from the Urals and play sometimes funky, sometimes heavy progressive rock but always coming back to very melodic elements like Gentle Giant or Genesis but then hopping off the expected road and going the other way only to come back to classic prog. The opening track is a great example of this and a great instrumental track. Most of the CD is actually instrumental. Endless Drama is next is also a little bit of everything. Very complicated music.. How do they remember all these changes from very poppy prog to almost heavy metal riffs. This track features the melodic voice of Vlad.. Queer Forest is again a quite complex number with a very melodic guitar solo. Taste a Cake is a short piano piece but with some violin at the end as well. The inexpressible Chagrin starts quite experimental and has some looped percussion-drums to start off this melodic piece that is almost some sort of synth pop thing but features some nice horns at the end. Not my favourite piece. SYX is next and is 11 minutes of pure 70’s prog instrumental rock (reminds of Kansas at the beginning because of the violin!). This track again takes very unexpected twists and turns. End…is actually not the end. The CD actually ends with the 18 minute Marvelous Choice. This long track is a trip through many genre of prog music including some electronica, dramatic keyboards and phrasing, soaring guitars and melodic moods. I should mention that the CD artwork is absolutely stunning and would be great on a LP. A bit disturbing but amazing stuff…
For more information you can visit the Unicorn Digital web site at: http://www.unicorndigital.com
Reviewed by Scott Heller