Space Mirrors
In Darkness They Whisper

A Russian version of Ayreon? That is a valid question coming to Russian keyboarder Alisa Coral who seems to be quite influenced by Hawkwind just as our dutch friend behind Ayreon and he is mentioned in the press info as well. The main person of this band also has a project called Psi Corps, one has to wonder if our friend Alfred is somehow featured there, the Babylon 5 connection seems undeniable and all of these little niceties makes me believe this could be an interesting album to sink my teeth into, but of course one never knows before trying. But, Arjen Lucassen, Babylon 5, space, psychedelia, Hawkwind and inspired by HP Lovecraft’s stories, that begs to spike my interest. The only thing that could possibly make it seem more interesting would be something to connect it with Farscape or Stargate. Did I mention by the way that the cover art and logo is not particularly fascinating, almost like they were made by a cild.

There is quite a lot going one on a purely musical vision, keyboard driven where the keyboards are the clearly dominating instrument and drums as well as guitars are somewhere in the back like played in the cargo bay while the rest is recorded in the control room of the Nostromo. I wonder if the singer of this band is the eight passenger, the one the crew of said ship picked up at LV426. He sure sounds like one of those, I have no idea why they have someone reading the lyrics rather than someone actually singing them on this album, The Vision Bleak manages to create Lovecraftian stuff while still singing in a similar type barytone as the singer of this band reads or talks. The album is a fair bit varied over the many tracks and the playing time is as well quite long but as it is so varied one can hardly complain about playing time for a monotonous reason (unless of course you think of the vocals). The production is a bit less good than one would presume for a project involving so many people from different stuff, especially when it is alluded that it is for fans of Arjen, it is nowhere near the (flying) dutchman’s quality of productions.

I think there are many good things about this project, which is the fourth by Space Mirrors, it shows a lot of free thinking, it is not bound by any rules it seems and goes on with keys, strings and all kinds of exciting things things. But already from the first track this disturbingly bad lyrics reader ruins it by being almost less enthusiastic than something one might find in a crematory, almost like by someone in a coma. Had the vocals just been bad it would not really had been that much of a problem but they are worse than bad, singing with such a lack of emotion just ruins all that is good about this album which is actually a fair bit of things. She has some ideas this russian musician, unfortunately I do not think they come together into something really worth listening to.

As projects go, this one does not really succeed, the vocals ruin everything. It is like reading a good story where every page has spilled coffee over it making it impossible to read it all, the story is sort of ruined. Of course in that case you could always go out and buy a new book, unless of course it was printed with coffee stains which is how one can metaphor this album. But no matter how we try and analyse things it is still something that could have been a good album being ruined by really bad vocals.

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