Comments for Artemiev, Eduard, The Warmth of Earth

Stunningly strange experience for most western listeners. A bizarre hybrid of synthesised New Age, cod-opera, powerhouse jazz-rock fusion and real surrealism, all underpinned by a magnificent harmonic and melodic sense of drama very much in the Russian symphonic tradition. Led by singer Jeanne Rozhdestvenskaya and featuring three keyboard players (including noted Melodiya synth artist Igor Len), this amazing album- almost a kind of testament of Soviet Socialist Realism in a Prog rock idiom- is all the more enjoyable for the fact that it is utterly untouched by the passage of time in western musical pop culture. There are notes of Dusty Springfield''s most OTT pop ballads, Japanese noise rock, and crazed bubblegum. But Artemiev''s wonderfully dramatic and Romantic compositional inspiration manages to make even these bizarre ingredients into a whole which any prog rock fan should listen to at least once.