Nomads of Hope: Breaking The Circles For A While

Nomads of Hope is the Swedish duo of Ingemo Rylander and Johan Hedrén, both formerly of the progressive rock band Kultivator. They met in the '70s and through the years have been involved in other musical projects and over this time have collected snippets of musical ideas that have led to their debut album Breaking The Circles For A While.

Rylander (vocals, recorder, tin whistle, bass, saz, harp) and Hedrén (digital and analog synthesizers, pianos, Mellotron, guitar, drums, wavedrum, darbouka, percussion) play an ethereal brand of rock that has elements of prog, trance, world music and folk. This isn't an album that will hit you hard with heavy rhythms and in your face musicianship as the band prefers a more subtle and laid back approach.

The title track begins the album with gentle guitar arpeggios, lush female vocals and processed electric guitar giving the music an added electronic element. Ingemo has a nice voice, with a very soft delivery. "In The Shadows" features layered guitar and lush Mellotron strings while "Every Daybreak" is very ethereal with placid cascades of guitar, layered vocals and an overall trippy vibe. "The Day" reminded me Security-era Peter Gabriel with its thick bass and interesting percussion. "All Nights" is a shorter tune with gentle guitar rhythms and spacey background textures, quite trippy and otherworldly, while the album ending "Water Flowing" has a mellow hip hop electronic sound, with Ingemo's haunting lead vocals.

The CD comes in a tasteful digipack and the artwork, done by Ingemo, is quite nice. It is refreshing to see an independent production exuding so much quality.

Breaking The Circles For A While is a nice debut from a band doing something a bit different than your average pop/rock production. Hopefully, there will be another disc soon as this duo has tremendous potential.

Track Listing:
1. Breaking The Circles (3:00)
2. In The Shadows (3:20)
3. Every Daybreak (6:14)
4. The Day (4:27)
5. Kindly Winds (4:18)
6. Politics And Dreams (5:02)
7. Connections (4:14)
8. I Use To Forget (3:53)
9. Hear My Voice (6:19)
10. Gloomy Silvernight (5:13)
11. All Nights (2:57)
12. Water Flowing (7:33)

Added: February 22nd 2015
Reviewer: Jon Neudorf
Score:
Related Link: Band's Official Site
Hits: 1987
Language: english

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