I've known Steven since late 1997 when I met him at a local "Under The Sun" show and was very much into neo-prog & symphonic prog. Before I heard these songs, I never went past those genres.
Upon hearing about Systems Theory I contacted Steven explaining that I'm on webtv and couldn't download the demos, so he sent me the a CD.
Now to my limited knowledge of music, it seems that Systems Theory combines many influences from progressive rock, world music, electronics combined with a modern production approach to create some original & unique music.The
band, primarily a 2 man operation, uses traditional instruments such as keyboards, guitar, violin, flute,
and mellotron. I was paricularly amazed hearing the drums (which accoring to the liners were written using ACID software and were
sampled from real drums). I have no idea what ACID means as I'm not a musician but, the drum sounds on the album are excellent, as I've heard some chessy electronic drum sounds.
"Under
Oriental Skies" is a nice dark atomspheric "oriental" sounding piece... starts out lush sounding
violin runs throughout, very modern & dark sounding..
"Breakdance
In Hell" now this is my favorite track of the CD, the build-up intro sounds like something emerging from "hell" witht almost tribal drums in the background, and with different instruments coming in and out of the mix over a monsterous mellotron. "Where Titans Sleep" continues with continues the tribal feel,
while "Strange Obsession", my second favorite track, tones down a notch, adding a jazzy
feel, reminding me of early Crimson.
"The Boy Who Gazed At The Stars" has sounding traditionally symphonic, showing the versilatily of the band.
The songs on this set of demo are very well done and could easily be a finished CD. I could just imagine a finished product, hopefully in the near future. Systems Theory is a refreshing band in the endless "oh we can sound like that" type bands out there today.
I also wanted to thank Steven for opening my ears to new sounds!!
Reviewed By Ron Fuchs on June 10th, 2001
