Artist: K2
Label: Progrock Records
Released: 2005
Rating: 2.5/5
A journey through time, a trip to the land of the pharaohs, where the gates to the beyond are waiting, whatever they may be, and where the questions to all our eternal answers are hiding. This is a concept album.
The first song is a long, very long beast. K2 have brought the spirit of the seventies back to life, and pretty successfully at that. After a four-minute intro, where spacey synthesizers carry us millennia back to the land of the children of the sun, the legendary Alan Holdsworth (ex –U.K., Soft Machine) jumps onto the scene with his trademark style and sound, and the excellent Ivette Devereaux masterfully carries on his work on electric violin. The good old U.K. actually comes back to life too, in a mild form of course. Ivette is great. The electric violin is the real treat on this record. And then there’s another little fella going by the name of Ryo Okumoto (Spock’s Beard). Ryo took care of the impressive moog rampage. The song is a gorgeous patchwork of different moods, a lively, dynamic jigsaw puzzle packed with fantastic Allan jazz rock solos, Ryo’s moog sprints, and the explosive punch the electric violin brings. Thanks to its many motifs the track feels fragile and literally seems to float on the waves. A superb curtain of synthesizers lifts it up onto those waves. The motifs unpredictably jump around here and there, and in between they even head off on exotic, oriental adventures. The vocals throughout the record were handled by Shaun Guerin, whose voice shamelessly pulls towards Peter Gabriel. Of course, Shaun’s delivery doesn’t come anywhere near the charisma that the one and only Gabriel can conjure up. It’s incredible how the energies played their games again while this record was being made! Soon after recording and conjuring up the magic that the ancient philosophy and eternal knowledge of the sages who wrote the “Book Of The Dead” long ago are steeped in, Shaun Guerin passed away. That gives the concept of the record even more weight!
The first song is a bit of a trick, because what follows, the remaining four parts of the concept, which together barely add up to a good twenty minutes, gets very close to British “neo progressive rock”, and here pointers to Genesis become very fitting too. Mellotron and the beat itself, a wound-up, fat bass tone (similar to the good old Rickenbacker), although I wouldn’t bet my hand that Jaquess didn’t play around with his bass sound in the overdubs and production. The sound and lines of Jaquess’s bass playing pull towards Chris Squire (Yes). K2 are right away in Chapter 2: Mirror of the Spirits, and the other three parts of the concept’s continuation stick to this syndrome too, incredibly similar to, say, I.Q., especially because of the vocals and the mellotron in the background. Luckily, the moments I mentioned are thrown in here, when a fresh breeze blows across the music! The soloing I mentioned (guitar, moog, electric violin) saves the record from sinking into the mediocrity of plagiarism, so in the end “Book Of The Dead” is by no means a lightweight!
Still, from the geniuses of K2, such renowned musicians, you’d expect a bigger contribution. On the other hand, this is Jaquess’s project, he’s the one who wrote the arrangements, and those present were simply carrying out his directions. Anyway, the album is great, the first song truly revives the grandeur of the epics by Yes, Genesis, ELP, with a slight nod to U.K. as well, but as I said, that’s very deceptive, because the rest of the record is “neo progressive rock”, which is still bloody alive on British soil today. In short, for everyone who’s sick of listening to old stuff and wants new bands that still play the “old” stuff, this record is for you. If it had been made 30 or 35 years ago, “Book Of The Dead” might have been a monumental rock masterpiece, but as it is, it’s got a whiff of very good plagiarism about it. Despite my warnings, this otherwise excellent album is definitely worth a close encounter for fans of classic symphonic “progressive rock” and “neo progressive rock”.
Lineup
Shaun Guerin – vocals
Yvette Devereaux – electric violin
Allan Holdsworth – guitar
Ryo Okumoto – piano, moog
Ken Jaquess – bass guitar, keyboards & 10-string acoustic guitar
Doug Sanborn – drums
John Miner – additional guitars
Production
Ken Jaquess
Tracklist
1. Chapter 1 : Infinite Voyage (23:25)
2. Chapter 2 : Mirror to the Spirits (6:54)
3. Chapter 3 : The Edge of Light (7:03)
4. Chapter 4 : Aten (Window of Appearences)(3:22)
5. Chapter 5 : Cloak of Antiquity (5:54)
Album length: 46:38
