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"How refreshing, In an age of media championed mediocrity...

Proghog | Australia | 06/17/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"How refreshing, In an age of media championed mediocrity we find a bunch of young guys banded together not afraid to pursue a fresh take on a tangent within that most hated of all genres.... "PROG"... gasp oh, shock, horror, there,I've said it..... with lashings of mellotron, sax, bass ,drums, guitar, analog dreams and musical exploration......

What we have here is a fresh take embodying the vibe of late 60's early 70's UK proto-prog and jazz prog from this era.... bands like Nucleus,Van Der Graff Generator,Khan,Gracious,Caravan,Colosseum,Fuschia,Arc, all come to mind.... plus a whole host of others from Germany and Italy too if you do your research and not believe those in the media that would have you think this period produced nothing more than self indulgent hippy ramblings best forgotten.....

I do find the music on this CD a little tentative in places to take that one step further into full freak out mode, and personaly I would have liked a little more horns to adorn more segments and not lapse into the slightly metaloid riffing that does occur.... But hey, what a great debut.

If anyone in the band reads this review, if I were you guys, let the keys and horns lead more. What made many of these earlier proto-proggers the gems they were/are was the dominant role these musicians had in the bands. Gutiar was a secondary sound. That's not to say the Diagonal's guitar sound is generic of todays sounds, on the contrary... it is most fitting to the overall organic sound these guys create and in my opinion only lapses a few times.... Also, continue to explore the sounds you want to create wherever it leads and do not be afarid to go back to the future. Listen hard to the LPs of the old fossils whose time will never come in this disgraceful mediocre, punked plume of image driven eggs we have today... Please just don't give up.....!!"