A review by Servant Solarfall

This 14th edition of ProgFarm...... one of the bands actually managed to steal-my-heart right there, on the spot. More specifically, a certain band hailing from Ukraine, some 2500 kms away from Bakkeveen!

The band that would turn out to be this festival's absolute revelation - Antony Kalugin, with his fantastic Sunchild/Karfagen-band, having come all the way from Ukraine - 2500 kms away - I can't say otherwise than that they truly BLEW THE VENUE's ROOF!

I only knew the name, as both Birdman and DeHuiz already told me they were looking out for this band in particular - so I prepared myself for a nice surprise and managed to grab myself a spot right in front of the stage. Boy, I wouldn't be disappointed, and neither would the other 100 fans inside the crammed venue. Ugh, why is so bloody HARD to write a review about a band's performance that truly ~blew you away~...?

Band leader Antony announced he'd carry out material from all of projects - material from his heavier Sunchild as well as from the more mellow Karfagen, and a Hoggwash-song to be included as well.

Well, eh... BRING IT ON!
And so he did, alongside his amazing band, all of them fantastic musicians - apart from Antony himself on vocals and his Korg Triton-synth, most notably, imho (without downplaying the other fellows!), the truly gorgeous singer Viktoriia Osmachko, Roman Gorielov on electric guitar - a Fender Telecaster, a guitar that one doesn't see used within progrock all too much at all! -, and, not to be forgotten, Sergii Kovalov on 'bayan' (some kind of an accordeon). WOW. BTW, Sergii is totally BLIND, and how nice to see this guy play his heart out on that 'bayan'.

How to describe their music? Ah, too bad, I feel like I am forced to indeed use that dreadful, often overused term 'eclectic', here. It goes from gentle-to-heavy, from mellow/ambient to folky, well... it in fact covers the entirety of what goes forth as being genuine ProgRock. Birdman was actually rather spot-on in calling Antony the "Arjen 'Ayreon' Lucassen of the Ukraine".
WHAT A TALENT that guy has!

Oh, I'd better *shut up* right now, I am just DREADFUL at reviewing absolutely fantastic live performances. All I could do is blurt out even more superlatives, sorry 'bout that, folks!

*speechless* *speechless* *SPEECHLESS* I am!

After their concert, about EVERYONE flooded to the merchandise area to get hold of these guys' CDs. I've never seen before such a true 'Get Their CD's!!!'-vendetta as the one that occured right there - such a joy to see, and so well-deserved.

I bumped into Antony at a certain point, and he told me - very nice fellow, HUGE smile on his face all the time - that he had sold over 100 of his CDs! Yeah I know, some of them were already sold-out at the moment I managed to even reach the merch area. We did manage to bag around ten of his CD's among the three of us, LOL.

Hope this amazing performance of his will indeed *spread the word* about him and his band. It's quite a disfortune to hail from Ukraine in stead of being English, or even Dutch in this regard. Antony would already be hailed a true GREAT within the genre if he were.

Best of luck to him and his band, and I truly hope to see them LIVE again in the near future.




A Review of Progfarm - November 6, 2010 by BACKGROUND MAGAZINE

Sunchild / Karfagen

How often can you witness a progressive rock band from the Ukraine on a Dutch stage? Well, I guess this will hardly occur, but this year Progfarm had programmed Antony Kalugin, one of the musical masterminds from this country.

Together with five musicians and a female singer they performed the music Kalugin had written for the albums he recorded with Sunchild, Karfagen and Hoggwash.

Some of them came by plane but Antony, his lovely wife and a couple of other musicians made the journey by car. On their way to The Netherlands they suffered a lot of rain and a five-hour delay when crossing the Polish borders. Nevertheless, they managed to get here in time to show their talents to the Progfarm-audience.

And the audience really loved them! While the seven musicians played a collection of songs from the aforementioned bands they got a warm response that inspired the musicians to give the best possible performance.

With only one keyboard Antony was ready to kick ass. He controlled the performance by giving directions to the other musicians like ticking their excellent bayan - a kind of accordion - and harmonica player Sergii Kovalev on the shoulder when he had to play because he was blind! The musicians started with a song taken from Karfagen's latest album Solitary Sandpiper Journey. Kingfisher & Dragonfly was a great introduction to perform several tracks from the first two Sunchild-albums. We could enjoy songs as Astoria and Rain Drops, but also Train Blues / Midnight Train on which the harmonica imitated the sound of a running train. After this Karfagen's music was placed on the stage including A Winter's Tale, one of my favourite pieces.

Despite the lack of the excellent Moog-solo from the original album this piece sounded perfect. Mr. Kalugin played excellent with a lot of passion and emotion.

During Close To Heaven singer Viktoria Osmanchko and guitarist Roman Gorielov got a well deserved solo spot. This short piece performed on the acoustic guitar was also the encore. Initially, they didn't want to play it because they were afraid that they would steal time of the next band to play.

Fortunately, the organizers could persuade them to do one final song before ending their excellent concert. This gig not only contained the wonderful music written by Antony Kalugin, but also elements of the original Ukrainian folk music.

This musical melting pot was apparently appreciated by most of the spectators, because shortly after they left the stage all CD's but one were sold out...