Times of crisis? Not if we're talking about new names in prog-related
music, because we welcome a lot of newcomers lately.
Illumion is the brainchild
of conservatory guitarist Eveline van Kampen. At the start originals were
played together with covers of, mainly, Pain of Salvation. An interresting
point is that amongst the inspirations names like Gong, Kate Bush, Loreena
McKennitt, PoS, Rush en Nightwish are mentioned. She worked with two members of
S.O.T.E., namely bassplayer/keyboardplayer (also the producer) Peter Boer and
percussionist Emile Boellaard. Eveline Simons was first asked as keyboardplayer
to follow up John de Bruijn, but she is in turn substituted by Annemiek de
Boer.
The voice of this album belongs to another laureat of the same conservatory,
namely Esther Ladiges. She previously sang in our genre, amongst others with
Ayreon and Ixion. That she is partial to jazzmusic, is unmistakenly audible on
this album of nearly an hour long. It is not a power vocalist but she displays
a lot of technique and feeling. Often multiple layers are recorded, which forms
the bombastic character of the music.
The eleven compositions go beyond the simple verse-chorus happenings.
The countless changes in tempo, atmosphere,
arrangments, and the way od singing of Ladiges make this an album that needs
multiple listenings to fathom these ingeniously built songs.
Comparisons are not easy to make, but a heavier version of Magenta, a more jazzy sounding
Stream of Passion, with sometimes a touch of Flower Kings and Pain of Salvation,
might� cover it pretty well.
Next to this the listener can indeed recognise fragments of all the names that
have been mentioned as her favourites.
Besides playing guitar Evline also plays
the Erhu, a two-stringed Chinese instrument. Despite her by no means small
qualities she puts herself in a modest place, because namely Boer and the
keyboard players get ample room to display their instrumental skills. The
drums, difficult because of the ever changing tempi and time signatures, are
being played faultlessly by Boellaard.
The lyrics to the songs are inspired by
the many books that Eveline van Kampen reads by writers like Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar
Wilde or Charles Dickens.
The albumtitle is significant, because this
enlightened company hunts for recognision and, in my opinion, seems to succeed
very nicely, albeit that this less than straightforward music is probably
better suited for a loyal dedicated following then for the large
audience.
Admittedly no new style but absolutely a different and original
nuance within the "female fronted progressive rock": Hats off to Lady
van Kampen.
Reviewer: Menno van Brucken Fock