Phaedra - Ptah (2010)

The debut album from this Italian symphonic prog band and an album I have really been struggling with for the last two months.

Struggling to get my head around, that is. It is one of those albums where I really cannot make up my mind about. The music on this seventy-five minutes long album is Italian symphonic prog with flutes, Italian vocals, keyboards, guitars, bass and drums. Phaedra is by no means a new band as they have been around since 1998 as a band. The musicians probably has longer experience than that. I notice this because the music is far from being run of the mill Italian symphonic prog rock. The music here is both complex and multi layered. Most of the music is pretty eclectic and not so much straight forward symphonic. It also visits chamber orchestra territory on more than one occasion. It also have some King Crimson like melody lines too.

Ptah is a big mouthful. Not only because of it's length. It is an album without any great song and/or melodies either. It is a good album though. It is also a very dense album which does not easily gives up it's secrets.

3 points