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NEW RELEASE!
Here is an official re-release
of VESPERO’s self-produced limited cdr-album “Concert At
The Union Of Theatre Artists” which was recorded in
December 2006 and finally published by the US-based
label Trail Records in 2008. It was a good decision to
pull that record out of a line of numerous self-made
releases as the album differed a lot from band’s other
live or studio out-puts. It was conceived as an
unplugged live performance featuring an interesting
acoustic percussionist-tandem by Ivan Fedotov (a regular
band’s drummer) and Alexander Krupin (a special guest)
as well as more expanded presence of female-vocalist
Natalia Turina. The other core-members were all there:
Alexander Kuzovlev (guitar), Arkady Fedotov (bass,
flute, synthesizer) and Alexei Klabukov (keyboards). The
sextet played mostly unpublished compositions and tried
to create a sort of mellow meditative trance atmosphere
mixing elements of ethno-psychedelia, world-fusion, and
space-rock in their own unique way. And they quite
succeeded in their trippy experiments. The overall
sounding quality of the album is quite good though still
unpolished with some background crips and noises. It’s
not very clear why the release came out as a CD-R (and
not regular CD) because in comparison with self-released
“Concert At The Union Of Theatre Artists” neither album
track-list nor sound-quality were not changed
principally (it seems that Trail Records just made a new
artwork). Anyway, we have “Foam”, a solid live recording
from the band’s pre-“Rito” history (possibly the first
from the VESPERO musical archives).
A landmark album after which the young band moved from spacy, ethereal material with lengthy instrumental passages to relatively concise, theatrical and avant-garde poetry dominated pieces. Rito spends most of its time with sonic textures and elongated compositions based on the repetitive and sometimes dark pulses that characterize their earlier work. But it also retains a gentle, fairy-tale ambience colored with beautiful vocalizations by Natalya Tjurina and Arkady Fedotov, as well as elegant violin passages by Valentin Rulev and flute by Fedotov himself. Their sound held together by Ivan Fedotov’s assertive drumming, Arkady Fedotov’s powerful bass and synthesizer work, and Alexander Kuzovlev guitar and sound effects – keep the proceedings moving no matter how spaced out the music gets. “Triptych”, “Inna’s Burst In Tears”, “Crabs Ashore”, and “Silence Breath Echo” – which one may know from the band’s earlier recordings – are all superior here, done clearly and louder, with a real edge to the playing (in many respects, thanks to excellent sound-production by Alisa Coral of SPACE MIRRORS). The album shows off a very potent group, able to create subtly textured music which evolves from art rock to space and kraut rock before turning up to neo psychodelia.
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