Muttered Promises From An Ageless Pond

1. The Day Before The Harvest - Lagada

2. The Day Before The Harvest - Virginal

3. The Day Before The Harvest - To Die In Avalon

4. The Year Of The Dream - Limiar, Winter's Request

5. The Year Of The Dream - Landhal's Cross

6. The Year Of The Dream - Summit

7. The Year Of The Dream - Nunca De Noche

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
On its first album "Muttered Promises From An Ageless Pond" (1988), GALADRIEL plays a refined and delicate Progressive rock evoking the best of YES, and the Italian school at its height (BANCO DEL MUTUO SOCCORSO, LOCANDA DELLE FATE...). Some delicate guitar lines, splendid synthesizers waves, a lot of rhythm breaks, melodic detours, harmonic richness, and polished and astonishing arrangements. It includes two unreleased tracks amongst which the superb 11 minutes long "The Year Of The Dream - Summit". On the second opus "Chasing The Dragonfly" (1992), GALADRIEL mixes this delicate Progressive rock, on a rhythmical plan, to other musical influences (Ethnic musics, African or oriental...), and also refers to flamenco-rock and classical music (RAVEL or DEBUSSY). They also alternate between accoustic and agressive guitars, succeeding thus in realizing a perfect osmosis between those styles, and a coherent music. The third album "Mindscapers" (1997) also crowns another ! success, by changing both band-members and inspiration. By so doing, GALADRIEL offers a concept album on a science-fiction topic. The creativity, sophisticated and elaborated melodies and instrumental parts have a lot of coherence, and this added to the sensitive vocal parts are a few of the strong points in this very good CD. GALADRIEL is taking the role of a master in the Progressive rock and tries to reach this flamboyant, lyrical, emotionnal and elaborated Progressive rock rich in melodies and technicity, produced by YES and VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR at their best.

Tracks:

The Day Before The Harvest - Lagada
The Day Before The Harvest - Virginal
The Day Before The Harvest - To Die In Avalon
The Year Of The Dream - Limiar, Winter's Request
The Year Of The Dream - Landhal's Cross
The Year Of The Dream - Summit
The Year Of The Dream - Nunca De Noche

Album Description

On its first album "Muttered Promises From An Ageless Pond" (1988), GALADRIEL plays a refined and delicate Progressive rock evoking the best of YES, and the Italian school at its height (BANCO DEL MUTUO SOCCORSO, LOCANDA DELLE FATE...). Some delicate guitar lines, splendid synthesizers waves, a lot of rhythm breaks, melodic detours, harmonic richness, and polished and astonishing arrangements. It includes two unreleased tracks amongst which the superb 11 minutes long "The Year Of The Dream - Summit". On the second opus "Chasing The Dragonfly" (1992), GALADRIEL mixes this delicate Progressive rock, on a rhythmical plan, to other musical influences (Ethnic musics, African or oriental...), and also refers to flamenco-rock and classical music (RAVEL or DEBUSSY). They also alternate between accoustic and agressive guitars, succeeding thus in realizing a perfect osmosis between those styles, and a coherent music. The third album "Mindscapers" (1997) also crowns another ! success, by changing both band-members and inspiration. By so doing, GALADRIEL offers a concept album on a science-fiction topic. The creativity, sophisticated and elaborated melodies and instrumental parts have a lot of coherence, and this added to the sensitive vocal parts are a few of the strong points in this very good CD. GALADRIEL is taking the role of a master in the Progressive rock and tries to reach this flamboyant, lyrical, emotionnal and elaborated Progressive rock rich in melodies and technicity, produced by YES and VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR at their best.

Customer Reviews:

Shy, but mature.......2006-12-11

Muttered Promises From An Ageless Pond is the first album by Spanish prog-rockers Galadriel, the band Jesús Filardi (vocals, keys and songwriting) has been pushing against all odds since the mid 80s.

This first album was released in 1988, and this CD edition adds 2 bonus tracks which were recorded BEFORE the album: "Summit", a 10 minute long prog exercise, and "Nunca De Noche", a little song with Spanish lyrics which features a very sparse arrangement but which works very well providing an intimate atmosphere.

As for the album proper, the band sounds a little shy and hesitant in places but the songs (although showing plainly their Yes and Genesis influences) are all very well done and once you get past the production weaknesses, as a whole, they provide you with a really enjoyable and magical musical journey.

Standout tracks are "To Die In Avalon", a very mellow and piano-based song with keys and guitar flourishes, which takes us on a sad trip to Arthurian times, and "Landhal's Cross" which, with a bit more of that medieval atmosphere in places, is certainly the best example of Galadriel's creativity at this point in their career.

This CD is well worth the money for any fans of classic prog. The production is not great and the band doesn't sound very confident, but it features very good tracks which would have been instant classics in the hands of an established prog outfit.

Muttered Promises From An Ageless Pond provides us with a good glimpse of the potential of a band that keeps making quality music today, as you can see from their (.............)

3 stars to the lack of originality,4,regarding their courage.......2003-02-06

Well this is a debut album of a controversial spanish prog band, which is quite Yes oriented,characterized by a certain research for enriching the music harmony ... here you find also some spare references to the classical spanish authors and some flamenco rock stuff in between!! The common places of classic romantic prog, within this short concept album, are anyway well hidden and naturally the arrangement and lush simple interplays as well - between the keyboards and the guitars-are very interesting ... of course They have reached the maturity as from their third album only ("Mindscapers", dated 1997), but you already begin to understand such possible evolution in their next efforts,as They avail themselves of new interesting musicians of the iberian scene (be careful with the next prog gigs in Spain, such as the Ibiza prog festival and with the participation as well of new spanish prog bands...anyway some Italian groups such as Le Orme, the main headliner of the previous edition, should complete this gig).
Instead talking about this line-up of Galdriel, They are not as genial as other neoclassical symphonic and more experimental european bands (Isildurs Bane and After Crying for example), nevertheless their debut album and - above all - their last effort "Mindscapers" could complete your european classic prog collection of the nineties ...expecially the 11 minutes long mini-suite, "The year of the Dream -Summit", which is their first stunning example of their good talent, nevertheless there is also a certain discontinuity in between , as a sort of tribute, due to their young age and the consequent ingenuity as well ... then you understand here their possible development of fresh symphonic ideas in the future, filtered through the etnic iberian tradition.Their attempt will be partially failed in their second album "Chasing the dragonfly", but recovered afterwards.

Recommended, even though it's not completely essential ...

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