MR. GIL: "Light And Sound"

Rating: 5/10

Label: Electrum 2011

Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

Who's that Mr Gil and what's the thrill with Light and Sound? Well, guitarist/composer Mirek Gil (ex-Collage) is appearantly an important figure of the Polish Prog scene? Ignorance is bliss they say as this is a first time experience with his band and music. So did we miss out on music spectacular in the past? Not quite sure yet as this is a very laidback affair with plenty of cello, haunting pianos in the dark (epic echoe style) and acoustic guitars.

It's the sort of music you're supposed to listen to while drinking wine infront of a fireplace and looking extremely bored or whatever. You know... you're supposed to be utterly relaxed and just let yourself be carried away by the ultra soft arrangements. Rest your weary head my dear. It's jazzy, but not quite jazz, more like atmospheric relax music and I know that some people would even describe it as new age. Neo-prog? it's the sound of Nosound gone haywire with a tapestry of ballads and no amount of coffee will keep you up and perky at the end of the CD. It's frankly just too much of a 'good' thing (depending on your definition of 'good', much like any Michael Bolton album in the last twenty years) and even though it's very professional done and executed, I wish they could just break out into an uptempo number.

There's a total of ten tracks, a couple of instrumental and one of them in their native language. Karol Wroblewski is a strong and rather impressive vocalist while Paulina Druch is quite the cello goddess. Decent and probably worthy 'wine drinking music' to some of you out there

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