Kalle Vilpuu - Silver Lining

Kalle Vilpuu is a guitar player, who's been a member of several Estonian toplevel bands over 30 years. Kalle Vilpuu's first solo album might be rated as a prog record, because as such it serves as a brilliant demonstration of the style's vitality, universal nature and swimming and rapid adaptation with other styles of music. The listener is treated to massive cities of sound with cloud-scraping towers coexisting with guitar drones of debris on a melancholy stormy beach, an industrial metal group's stubborn sampler with it's plans of world domination, chamber sounds of British period dramas, the beckoning, glistening heavy of Paradise City, space rock pulse transmitted into nothingness from an abandoned orbital station, nihilist unrootedness of experimental electronics, and the dream worlds of a pop diva asleep on the back seat of a limo. There is exact science of sounds mixed with inclinations towards chaos, there is both sonic spaciousness and minimalism of compositions. Experimental and surprising, at the same time offering familiar tangible fulcrums. It's abundance of ideas and genres does not, however, render the album uneven - courtesy of carefully weighed placement of tracks and duration that holds true to the LP standard - but instead helps to keep this audible rainbow fresh through countless listening sessions, offering unique reflections to fit various moods. Even though it is first of all prog, "Silver Lining" might serve as metal for some, or indeed synthpop-influenced industrial or digital rock for others. What it definitely serves as, however, is a testament to the author's love for music and respect for his favorite artists, as well as his unhindered grasp of both the classical greats of the music world and the creation of angry young men still wet behind the ears.