'Sunchild - The Gnomon' Reviews

A review by Hans Ravensbergen

If I ask you to mention three busy musicians in the progressive rock scene you probably will say: Steven Wilson, Roine Stolt and Arjen Lucassen.

Less known but just as talented as for mentioned icons is a young man from Ukraine, named Antony Kalugin. This young keyboard player (born on February 11th, 1981) is the main strength and founder of the bands Karfagen, Hoggwash and Sunchild. Besides these bands he composes and releases his own new-age sounding music under his own name (album “The Water”, 2008).

Most well known band is undoubtedly Karfagen whereby he plays jazz and fusion like music. You can find some reviews of Karfagen albums on the website www.progwereld.org. Less known is the music Antony Kalugin plays with Sunchild.
Just like Karfagen Antony Kalugin composes all the Sunchild Music by himself. Most of the lyrics are written by himself with a little help from his friend, the Welshman Will Mackie. To me they look the perfect musical combination.

Will Mackie is able to translate Kalugin’s mostly personal lyrics into good English, I language Kalugin can speak and understand but in which it is difficult for him to express himself (that is also the reason that all the reviews on the Dutch progressive rock website Progwereld are written in Dutch).

Besides playing keyboards and synthesizers Kalugin sings not without merit. Sometimes you can hear a bit of an accent, but that doesn’t disturb at all. Further more he is assisted by many young talented musicians and male and female singers from his own country.

“The Gnomon” is the debut album of Sunchild and it is a double one. The main lyrical concept is the memories of Kalugin about his youth and teenage years. In particular the hard choices you have to make when you are young, the innocent games you play without realising that these choices and games are defining your adultness, are woven into some (epic) tracks.

Celtic and Middle Age sounds starting the instrumental title track. This track flows seamless into the even instrumental track Astoria in which you can hear a unadulterated piece of Flower Kings like music, after which Camel is taken the lead with Andy Latimer-like guitar playing. Did I hear some Quidam? Heavy guitar riffs combined with nice flute playing makes me believe it is really this Polish band.

These first ten minutes are characteristic for Antony Kalugin’s music. He puts classical and symphonic music in the blender together with nowadays progressive rockmusic. Scatter this with some traditional Ukraine folk music, simmer it for some time and finished is your musical diner! Welcome into the kitchen of three-star cook Kalugin. From this moment on your tastebuds don’t want anything else.

After some fifteen minutes in the track Sleepwalker you can hear Kalugin’s vocal chords vibrate for the first time. At this moment you wake up out of your little knap after a pleasant nice (musical) dinner. The Flower Kings doesn’t left the air fully, but the sound is more blended with the pleasant keys of Kalugin. A special brew of trumpet, trombone and sax is the topping on the cake of this 27 minutes clocking magnum opus of disc number one. Did I mention the other instruments oboe, bayan and clarinet? You come across with them all. The jazzy sounding and with nice keyboard playing containing track The Prayer Of The Broken Heart and the instrumental track Adrift closes disc one.

Disc two contains ‘almost’ four tracks with duration from five to twenty minutes. The ballad Love Will Shine Like Gold is dedicated to Kalugin’s sun Mark. It is a track with quite personal lyrics in which you can hear Kalugin, who is not a first class singer, does a terrific vocal performance. To me in this track he sounds like Göran Edman.
Sunchild starts modern and smooth. This alternate track has many keyboard solos and you also can hear many copper wind instruments. Enjoy the varied sounds from this Ukrainian keyboard virtuoso and the lasting rhythm section. All tracks on ”The Gnomon” are mostly containing of long instrumental passages, this is different on Wonderworld. In my opinion this track has too many lyrics and I have the impression that Kalugin has overdone himself here. But this is undoubtedly the recklessness of a young and inexperienced musician.

Lovers of music, interlarded with modern sounding keys and progressive rock that bridge the ‘classics’ with the ‘moderns’ are fully able to enjoy themselves a very nice meal with “The Gnomon” which is even digesting very well with it’s 96 minutes!

Waiter!

Hans Ravensbergen
Progwereld (www.progwereld.org)

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A review by Alejandro Exposito Dopico

I love it!
 
I almost knew the whole album because I had listened the first disc at the Rogues' Gallery, a progressive rock podcast and online radio. And after that, I downloaded the song Wonderworld from your web site. So I was excited for listening the whole thing at once. I love the album. It has all that I like in progressive rock. The way you combined different genres, moods, textures, colours, dynamics and instrumentation. I know these days there are a lot of brand new keyboards and sample libraries with an hyper-realistic orchestral sounds but I still do prefer the real thing for this task. The parts of the brass section, flute, cello, oboe and clarinet are awesome. Really talented musicians in the entire album. It has the best of the classics; Yes, ELP, Genesis.. and of the new ones; Spock's Beard, Anglagard, Dream Theater... all of that covered with a Floydian atmosphere, but the best of all is that you are not a clone of any band. You have your own sound and in a work with a duration of more than an hour and a half, there is no bouring or superfluous parts. It is very well produced and with great lyrics and voices too. The work done by Antony Kalugin is a masterpiece in my opinion. An without a doubt is one of the best albums of 2008.
 
I am excited for your next release.
 
Best wishes from Spain,
Alex

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A review by By tlarz, (courtesy of Progplanet)

Anthony Kalugin, keyboard wiz of Karfagen fame and collaborator with Will Mackie on the brilliant Hoggwash album: “The Last Horizon” (read the review elsewhere on Progplanet!), has this time outdone himself, with this double feature concept album called: “The Gnomon”...Subject being the childhood days, growing up and the childhood innocence which we all hold deep within´us!

Kalugin has chosen the name: Sunchild, for this project and it suits the main themes quite fine! With the help of great Ukrainian fellow musicians, Kalugin has created a little masterpiece, it is of course keyboard loaded/orientated and
mind you plenty of that!! But there are also many other magic sequences with guitars, finely orchestrated vocals (though sparse) and an overflow (in a positive sense) of instrumental theme´s in which (of course) the keyboards rules!!

This being a double feature, with “only” 8 tracks you can imagine , the lenght, the epic proportions of some of the tracks on this release !!

Somehow I find the latter part of this double more exiting!?
Dont ask me why, I just think that part 2 are more powerful and intriguing! But overall this release has some superb moments of prog/symphonic and little hints of traditional folk/classic music!!

In addition to the “normal” band line up you get real (as in not sampled or keyboard induced): flute, cello, trumpet, trombone, oboe, sax, clarinet!!

My fave tracks (in no particular order):
“Midnight Train” with superb dual male/female vocals.

“Wonderworld” an epic (20:46) track that (just about covers all territory in symphonic prog) initially reminds this reviewer of Pink Floyd at their best!!

“Sleepwalker” another epic track (26:59) with heavier approach, still with gentle passages, a great track!!

So to my trained ears, a superb outing and a brilliant addition to any serious progfans collection!!

OH, the superb production are of course due to the
excellent collaboration and finely adjusted ears of Will Mackie & Kalugin!! Way to go guys!!

And, yes I like the cover art!!

Gnomon the word, intrigued me..as it probably do you?!
According to the dictionary its the hand on a sunwatch
that indicates the time, by the shadow it cast´s !!

Last words: Go get this!! You wont regret it!!