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Mantra Sunrise (USA) - 2000 - "Mantra Sunrise"
(58 min, "Tributary")


****

Why (Bissing, Miner)
Timeof Year (Miner, Bissing, Garabedian)
Brudenell (Miner)
DyingDay (Miner, Bissing)
SleepingWhales (Miner)
NorthernLight (Miner, Bissing, Garabedian)
YourHeart, I & II (Miner, pt 1)
                  (Garabedian, Miner, Bissing, pt 2)
Casino (Bissing)
Landof Sprinagar (Miner, Bissing, Garabedian, Newmark)
MantraSunset (Miner)

Line-up: John Miner - electric & acoustic guitars, vocals; Joel Blissing - lead vocals, bass; Wayne Garabedian - drums & percussion; keyboards

Guest musicians: Gary Newmark - drums on tracks 1,4 & 9; Ann Jorgensen - flute on 4

Lyrics by Miner, except 5 (by Miner, Wilk), 8 (by Miner, Bissing), 1 & 9 (by Blissing), Tracks 3,7(pt 1) & 10 are instrumentals.

(Sad to say this, I wrote reviews on "Mantra Sunrise" and "Heaven's Cafe" CDs a few days after a promo package from a new label in Las Vegas had arrived. But as I rushed to the hospital, my wife trying to send these materials to my only colleague on the site (since its birth on October 1, 1998) did not know how to operate the PC, and unpurposely caused some damage to the HDD and the mother board, so they had to be replaced.)

Prologue. IMO, this label was named "Tributary" not at all accidentally. As I guess, a significant part of its releases are and will be as if dedicated to those wonderful, truly good old (old'n'gold!) times that we remember as the years of Love and Flowers, Free Sex, Hippies - those honest children of their own internal Freedom, who rejected any traditional religious teachings (oh well, I still reject them, though I am rather a 'child' of the 70s), Woodstock, and of course, those were the years of the birth of Progressive Rock. Some music from "Tributary" that I heard until now fully corresponds to such terms as early Progressive or pre-Progressive Rock.

The Album.

I think, the guys of Mantra Sunrise well know such words like Karma, Reincarnation, Previous and Future Lives, Material and Spiritual World (that's for sure, as I've listened to "Heaven's Cafe"!). They also must be familiar with the Music Legacy of the same old'n'gold years in the second half of the 60's, and of course with its progressive manifestations in the face of Cream, Barclay James Harvest, etc, and especially of Procol Harum. Despite the fact I hear some traces of the structures that are more or less inherent to early Procols in the music of Mantra Sunrise, it is obvious that, on the whole, these guys go their own quite original way of composing. With the music of Mantra Sunrise a true Spirit of the Music Legacy of the last years of the sixth decade of the century, already totally forgotten, is born again. The Mantra Sunrise debut album is a real work of nothing less than early Progressive Rock. This is not blues, neither rock'n'roll nor some other style, as the main 'formula' of "Mantra Sunrise" is typical for what we call "our Genre": concrete Rock structures (maybe, with just a few rhythm'n'blues elements) and simple yet once again concrete arrangements on the basis of any theme. Acoustic guitar passages are very nice and at the same time quite complex. All the band members play their 'roles' excellent - according to the Spirit of Time - being as if the musicians of the Past, that comes out from our Future to be our Present each new moment of Life. While all the vocal parts are done very well, I like the instrumental palette of this album even a bit more thanks to the well performed electric and acoustic guitar solos and passages, original bass lines and strongly constructed work of the rhythm section on the whole.

Summary. I can just guess that some of the Tributary stuff are those 'Dead' Stars of the 60's, who were born on the same shit planet according to their own karma. But I know exactly the Reincarnation of Early Progressive Rock has really taken place thanks to the same Tributary stuff. I've rated the Mantra Sunrise debut album as 'simply' a good album from the standpoint of a 'profound' Prog-lover, though of course it is in general really great to listen to such original and at the same time such nostalgic music. I'm sure a lot of (even mature) Prog-heads will fully agree with me, if they really want to remember how it all started. Are you ready for some 'old' yet very refreshing music? Then please go to: http://tributarymusic.com/.

VM. October 11, 2000


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