Chinese Beard - "Shades Of Tomorrow" Review

Artist/ Band: Chinese Beard
Title: Shades Of Tomorrow
Label: Self release
Year of Release: 2010
Offical Artist/ Band Link

The Review:

Chinese Beard began in the spring of 2008, when multi-instrumentalist Teemu Kurki (Guitars, Bass, Keyboard, Programming, Vocals) decided to make his own music without any compromise. Unlike other recordings, you can barely notice that the drums were programmed. I’m always amazed by technology. In 2010 Chinese Beard released it’s debut, Shades Of Tomorrow, which contained over 50 minutes of music and only 4 songs.

You can image the lengths of these songs including the title track which is split into two, the opening and closing tracks. Both combined is just over 22 minutes. The opening track (10:51) and the closing track (11:45) are completely instrumental while the others have some vocal tracks. It wasn’t until the last minute that Teemu decided to do the vocals himself. His vocal delivery reminds me of Frank Bornemann of Eloy. You can hear traces of Teemu’s Finnish accent, but it doesn’t take away from the compositions at all. It actually gives the songs some character.

“Graveyard Shift” (9:17) is the shortest track on the album and contains the first vocals on the album. “In The Wake of the Crescent Moon” (18:48) is the complete epic of the album (worth the cost alone) since the title track is split into two. Both of these songs contain minimal amount of vocals since they were originally conceived as instrumentals.

In closing, we here an amazing debut of 2010 and one of my favorites of the year. The album has a slight raw feel to it, this is probably due to not being slickly polished in the overall production. This gives character to the album and makes it one of the highest recommended releases of 2010.

Reviewed by Ron Fuchs on October 17th, 2010

Tracks:

01. Shades Of Tomorrow, Part I (10:52)

02. Graveyard Shift (9:15)

03. In The Wake Of The Crescent Moon (18:39)

04. Shades Of Tomorrow, Part II (11:45)