Artist : Karfagen

Album : Passage to the Forest of Mysterious

Release Date : 01-04-2023

Added : 24-04-2023






Along with the 'Sunchild' compilation, 'Time and the Tide' (partly streaming), 'Antony Kalugin' continues to offer us sumptuous enregistrements studio with this time 'Passage to the Forest of Mysterious' which is in a way a continuation of the previous albums 'Birds of Passage' from 2020, 'Land of Green and Gold' from 2022. This last opus is in fact a double CD whose bonus CD 'Birds' is an instrumental album taken from 'Birds of Passage' which has been released in early 2023. As usual, he offers us symphonic progressive rock alternating between fairly short titles and long developments: on this last album, we are spoiled with two long developments including the 19 minutes of 'Birds of Passage and the Enchanted Forest' which was released in a shorter version of 9 minutes at the beginning of 2023 and the 22 minutes of 'Mysterious Forest' if we count the 3 parts of this river title. Given my last two columns, I will not launch into titles in which I would risk repeating the same superlatives for this latest baby from the Ukrainian as for 'Birds of Passage' and 'Land of Green and Gold' because we find all these rich and dense soundscapes with the use of different electric and acoustic instruments allowing to considerably enrich the whole: the first title which is the 4th part of 'Kingfisher and Dragonflies' continues the adventure started in 2007 and is the beginning of a new journey with soft and serene atmospheres always brought by the acoustic instruments which are the flute and the guitar and if you hang on to this first title, you should very strongly adopt this new album of 'Karfagen' which takes us on a new journey filled with sensitivity and poetry with of course, for my part, a preference for the two long developments which take us on board each in a labyrinth in which it is good to get lost and which requires several listenings to fully understand all the nooks and crannies, like an explorer discovering an unknown land and taming it little by little. And as always, the cover of the album produced by 'Igor Sokolskiy' is magnificent and completes 'Passage to the Forest of Mysterious' in a very beautiful way.

In short, faithful to his previous discography, 'Anthony Kalugin', always surrounded by talented artists who embellish his music, offers us a new jewel of progressive that we savour quietly with headphones to relax after a hard day's work...

Line Up / Musicians

Antony Kalugin (Keybords, Vocal, Percussions, Flute, Guitar, Programmation) + Guests : Mathieu Spaeter (Guitar), Max Velychko (Guitar), Konstantin Lonenko (Bass), Viktor Syrotin (Drums), Tim Sobolev (Vocal), Olha Rostovska (Vocal), Aleksandr Pavlov (Guitar), Yan Vedaman (Saxophone), Alexandr Pastuchov (Basson), Maria Baranovska (Violin), Elena Kushiy (Flute)