For several years now, I have been following 'Antony Kalugin' with his various projects, my last column from April 2023 'Passage to the Forest of Mysterious' being dedicated to the latest album by 'Karfagen'. This latest album 'A Message of Peace Tour Live' is a concert recorded at the 'Parkvilla Theater' in Alphen-on-the-Rhine (Alphen aan den Rijn) in the Netherlands in 2022. It is necessary to underline the particular context of this tour since Antony, as a Ukrainian, could not leave his country in the event of mobilization and his country still accepted that he could do this tour to, as the name of the album mentions, bring a message of peace. As usual, during tours, he takes the opportunity to perform compositions from his three main projects, 'Hoggwash', 'Sunchild' and 'Karfagen'. On the menu of this one, the compositions of 'Sunchild' constitute the majority with seven titles performed, the other five being shared between 'Karfagen' and 'Hoggwash' which allows us to hear or re-hear older compositions. Needless to say, we have a wonderful time with these very endearing artists, the vocal section being particularly rich since in addition to Antony Kalagin', these are the two singers 'Mariya Panasenko' and 'Olha Rostovska' who accompany him in this live and the rest of the line up is composed of Anton Barsukov' on guitar, 'Vladyslav Karbovskyi' on bass and 'Kostiantyn Shepelenko' on drums. Even if the latest 'Karfagen' is not present in the set list, the latter presents a nice variety of compositions with, on the one hand, short and fairly direct titles such as 'Shall We Run?', 'The Reason Why' or 'Visionary Sights' which develop catchy melodies and, on the other hand, long progressive developments like 'Another Friday Night' and 'Out Of The Darkness', both from the 'Hogwash' project and dating from 2007 but also tracks from 'Sunchild' albums like 'Rain Drops' and 'The Invisible Line'. We will also note at the end of the concert the two instrumentals 'Amused Fair' and 'Father' which show all of Antony Kalugin's talent as a composer, the concert ending with the magnificent ballad 'A Day Without Rain'.
In summary, 'Antony Kalugin', surrounded by talented artists, offers us a very beautiful concert which, in the circumstances that we know for the Ukrainians, takes on a very particular character and, beyond the fans of 'Karfagen', 'Sunchild' and 'Hoggwash', 'A Message of Peace Tour Live' is a good way to discover these different progressive projects with compositions which we tame very easily thanks to beautiful melodic lines... | |
