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Rainy Season, Return (Boheme)
The Boheme label first caught my attention with their reissue of the
frighteningly good Horizont albums (frightening in the sense that these great
albums were nearly lost). With the reissue of Rainy Season's Return,
the label once again succeeds in rescuing a truly worthy progressive album
from the purgatory of unavailability. Like Horizont, Rainy Season were a prog
band in the USSR, but their sound is quite different. Rainy Season play a
mysterious, cold style of atmospheric instrumental progressive rock. I would
almost use the word ambient, but that would seem to deny the group's melodic
sensibility and the feeling of eeriness rather than relaxation that comes
from listening to the music. Although the style doesn't seem to out there,
I'm hard pressed to think of another band that sounds like this (perhaps King
Crimson at their darkest improvisational moments).
Return consists of three long tracks (7, 14, and 20 minutes), all
having names that describe their moods quite well. "Scents of a Forest"
starts with beautiful and haunting flute perfectly portraying the night
forest. The flute melodies soon disappear as the electric guitar takes over,
backed by metallic percussion. Repeating the exchange between flute and
guitar, the piece keeps building and building. This is really powerful stuff.
"Towards Clear Water" features delicate guitar work and more of the eerie
metallic percussion that seems to be so subtly integral to Rainy Season's
sound. It's the only mostly mellow track on the album, but is still
excellent. "Red Night" (a nod to Crimson, perhaps?) begins with disjointed,
spastic percussive sound and slowly builds into a powerful climax with eerie
choral voices leading the way. The music then transitions to the second part
of the composition, which features passionately angular guitar work against
the drone in the background and the electronic and acoustic percussion
complete the crescendos.
This really a great album and all fans of atmospheric progressive rock
should definitely check it out. Many thanks to Boheme for unearthing a lost
classic! (by the way, the liner notes say their are other Rainy Season albums
of equal quality - I hope we see these soon!)
~Jon Dharma Murphree~, EER-MUSIC.com
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