The accents in modern day progressive rock are slowly changing. More and more bands with a classic progressive history are opening themselves up to the popular melancholic and ambient sounds: Marillion, Porcupine Tree and Peter Gabriel are perfect examples of these kinds of bands / artists, but there are also a lot of popular charts bands that incline to a more progressive sound: Radiohead and Coldplay to name the two most obvious. The Italian band Moongarden is a just a little bit close to the second. The lack of really complicated compositions and the characteristic melancholic sound of vocalist Luca Palleschi (combine Chris Martin and Anthony Kiedis) makes this album most promising, especially in commercial point of view. Solid songs with good melodies and quick catchy vocals (without the expected Italian accent). “Round Midnight” has definitely got what it takes, to take off internationally. So, if I were a cold and commercial orientated critic, I would probably give this album the highest rating possible.

The fact is however that I’m a bit fed up with most commercial sounding bands and the globalization of popular (and even progressive) music.

Ahh, I remember the days where by listening to the first few seconds of any album you could immediately recognizing what the origin of the band was. Those hilarious German proggers with their ‘Allo Allo’ accents (I know, bad comparison since Allo Allo was situated in France, but you get the point (`Gutmurning`)), the easy listening and therefore somewhat emotionless prog of the Americans and the symphonic prog of those Dutch. On the other hand, the songs of Moongarden are really good. So good actually that I would almost consider giving this album a low rating to prevent this band from being successful, keeping this little 5" gem far from the commercial success that is destroying most of the artistic values in the modern day music scene. Oh what the hell “Round Midnight” will get what it decerves: 9,5 out of the 10 possible points (I took of 0,5 points because of the hard time I had rating this album). I’m not sure wheter “Round Midnight” can be obtained in your local shops, so for further information check out the website of the label www.galileo-records.com