Kosmos-Salattu Maailma (Kosmos 004)

The progressive psychedelic folk band Kosmos from Turku, Finland are back with their 4^th self released album. The band has added new and different elements to their sound over the course of the 4 records. The lyrics are all very cosmic and mystic and there is a English translation as the words and stories are very much an important part of appreciating the entire concept of the band.  The album features 7 tracks in 38mins. The opening track (A Hidden World) is a slow and very beautiful number with mellotron, and almost symphonic instrumentation at times. It tells a story of a powerful like dream like state. Seashell and it also features mellotron and Kari introduces the flute as well as acoustic guitar. Incantation is a simple acoustic track that features Jukka on the violin. The Mirror is a shorter track and again with a small flute section. Päivi sings beautifully. The Wind is a 7 min track that starts off very spacey and then goes into an acoustic section and slowly the mellotron enters again and then the violin after the vocal section. A Dream features Juha and Timo doing spoken words and does not feature Päivi. IT does start very spacey and with glockenspiel and mellotron. Pretty trippy song as I love the spoken Finnish language. Back to the Stream is the last track and features Olli on different hand drums-percussion instruments and goes back to the more symphonic theme that the album started with. This is a very interesting group of musicians as nearly every song is written by a different person and total of 10 different people play or speak on the record. I really love the artwork cover and layout on the vinyl record gatefold. Fantastic! Another very nice and cool release to crank up on a Sunday morning or late at night to relax and drift away to another world, where there is no war, no poverty, people dream and sleep well at night without stress and wake up with a smile on their face next to the one they love!

http://www.nic.fi/~ovaltone