Too much has been said about the supposed lack of creativity and originality in the progressive rock scene at the moment. Even most of the innovative bands of the past can’t keep up with finding new and unexplored directions, resulting in copying others and even themselves. Well, for all of you that recognize this vision of today’s progressive scene, Greetings From Nostradamus might be what you have been waiting for. Vladimir Badirov, an Uzbekistan percussionist, has gained quite some fame in resent years, being the drummer in several successive bands ranging from jazz to ethnic pop and even some traditional Uzbekistan music. After about twenty years he finally found the time to combine all his experiences into a solo project. If you can handle the experiments with rhythms, loops and samples there’s always the electronic sounds and the traditional Uzbek folk instruments like Nai, Ud and Sato that will make this album most inaccessible. What makes it even harder to listen to the music is the fact that there’s hardly a single melody on the album or it should be the occasional guitar or ud.

Greetings From Nostradamus is fifty minutes of excellent rhythms combined with (very) strange sounds. There are some vocals on the album but these are more or less scat (I can’t imagine this being Uzbek). I know that reviewers should try to describe the music to the readers but the stuff Badirov produces can not be described without analysing every single note, and every single sound. I hope that this review has made you curious. If you’re in to something completely different or if you have special interest in Uzbekistan, you might consider buying this album. If you’re into mainstream music you should definitely keep your money in your pocket. Personally I got more and more appreciation for this release. The best thing is that it won’t bore you, not even after you’ve listened to it one hundred times. The album also features some of the best and vibrant rhythms I’ve heard in a long time.