Prologue.
Arsenal is undoubtedly the most significant phenomena within the Progressive Rock movement in the USSR / C.I.S. where there's no other band of the genre with such an array of released (let alone the unreleased ones!) material. Arsenal's discography contains no less than ten full-fledged LPs and almost all of them are presented on 5 CDs I'm going to tell you about. Arsenal, however, has some more original material recorded mainly during their live performances in different countries and
years. Partly those tracks are included in a series of 4 CDs released by "Boheme Music", but some of
these recordings have been irretrievably lost. Arsenal's debut self-titled studio album was recorded in Riga in 1977 during their Latvian tour, but the only Soviet "Melodiya" label released the "Arsenal" LP only in 1980 and solely thanks to the help of the truly progressive Soviet composer Yuri Saulsky. Additional tracks presented on this CD together with the Arsenal debut LP's tracks (1-4) were recorded in 1978-1979 mainly in Moscow.
The album.
All the four compositions from Arsenal's debut LP, including even a piece with vocals, represents an absolutely unique 'progressive formula': this is a really innovative mixture of structures typical for Classical Music, complex arrangements of truly Progressive Rock and some improvisational 'details' obviously related to the Classic Jazz Fusion genre. Despite the presence of lots of the wind instruments there is a little of 'jazzy spirit' in these pieces. Prolonged in conformity with the unwritten laws of serious Progressive Rock (and Classical Music too, though) such instrumentals as Dangerous Game, The Tree and Ivory Tower are really wonderful musical works and each of them has a distinct classical feel. But, constant changes of themes and tempos, rises to a powerful playing of all the band's musicians together and falls into the very quiet 'spacey' musical spaces, full of mysterious and as if unearthly sounds, are typical rather for some classic 'side-long' pieces of the Progressive Rock genre. Arsenal, however, was the very first (and remains the only to this day) band to create such musical forms using quite an 'unusual' instrumental base with trumpets, trombones, etc as lead and main soloing instruments. Three more songs on the album have practically the same structures. These are Ragtime, Genesis and Gavotte And March, and a direct addressing to such a well-known classical piece as the latter with the following arranging it in the spirit of Progressive Rock was a wise decision regarding the album as a whole. Vocals based Suite in a Flat Major and The Last Song, an adaptation of Russian folk song, of course, both sound a bit differently in comparison with the other tracks here, but their instrumental parts are very close to the aforementioned "mixed" structures. So, on the whole this 77-minute CD has a very monolithic, practically conceptual overall sounding.
Summary.
First, here's an important note. Early compositions of Arsenal, particularly those included
in the first CD and described here, are probably the most complex and mind-blowing works Arsenal ever created. It's necessary to listen repeatedly to this CD to be able to comprehend its wonderful nature and get great pleasure with each new listening. A pure narcotic… sorry, masterpiece! However, we musical addicts (moreover, progressive music addicts), who have this brilliant passion, are perhaps healthier than those with no passions at all, especially men.
