Symphonic art rock is alive and well and living in Japan, and Kalo's Spiral Dream is its new poster child. The sound on this album varies from light symphonic fusion through '70s style progressive rock to richly textured classically oriented music. Think Camel crossed with Vangelis, played before a backdrop of harps and harpsichord, pianos and guitars, and 'Trons and synths.
The music is mostly instrumental, with vocals applied to just 3 tracks by the sweet "girlish" singing of Miori Naritomi. Very melodic, sung in Japanese, with the voice providing focus and flow and used as an instrument rather than dominating in the fashion of 'songs'. Several tracks include long, simple passages of wailing Latimer-esque guitar solos played to the accompaniment of Mellotron chorals. Very elegant.
Kalo is a project of Masahiro Uemura, who handles keyboards and guitars. It is a collection of 12 short tracks running between 3- and 6-minutes, although there is enough thematic connection among the tracks that it hangs together as a consolidated body of work. Most track titles have English names, although the 3 vocal tracks are sung purely in Japanese. The liner notes contain the lyrics of those 3 songs, so you can follow along – if you can understand the language and read the Kanji text.
The music on the first few tracks is stronger and fairly rock-oriented, and a standout favorite is opening track "Dharani". That guitar and Mellotron sound is simply wonderful. As you get further into the album the music becomes progressively more laid back and symphonic, until it finally ends sounding new-agey and ethereal. The more ballsy "Dharani" is excellent, the rest is very good.
Track Listing
- Dharani 4:01
- A Voice in Blue 5:56
- Forest Fairies 4:48
- Sunset 3:41
- Eternity 3:29
- Land of Spirits 5:58
- Rerakamuy 5:15
- Into Existence 3:39
- To the Memory of a Person 4:15
- Sensitive Air 4:23
- Gleam 6:22
- Spiral Dream 6:02
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