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Translated German review of Magic Pie
at http://www.babyblaue-seiten.de/ Reviewed by Henning Mangold Although the guitar is like an adventure playground, the music from the first recording by Magic Pie ( Illusion & Reality Part I ) becomes melodious presented to the audience. Based upon the simple fact that new bands are added to a hardly expandable market all the time, new progbands have a difficult task approaching it. The market consists of an audience which probably don't have the time to listen to all of them, and for that reason prefer well known artists. At first, I also reacted with scepticism when a new 4 track demo arrived in my mailbox, thinking to myself; "another one ?" Anyway, who would know, I got impressed and wanted to hear it once more; hence this review. Ahead I must mention that the reception quality of this music is extraordinary good for demo-ratios. But this alone is not reason enough to show further interest. The presented guitar work by Kim Stenberg has to be mentioned. To him there is no problem switching between melodious styles during a split-second, and thereby create music whereby breaks seem completely normal, and not a way of searching for a new style. What I define as a melodious style, meen sounding like John Petrucci trying to sound like Roine Stolt copying Andy Latimer. The short following "tapping" reminds me strongly of Yngwie Malmsteen, but also an influence by Petrucci. Some bold parts are so good that I'm even thinking of YES. The first seconds of the next track (Final Breath) tear the listener into an odyssey of a furious YES-variant over Symphony X into Dream Theaters "New millennium". But as mentioned; everything is being played so racingly fast that it's barely noticeable. The melodious parts rises beautifully emerging like a plague (The first theme from the first track (Part I) and "Reprise", reminds me very much of "Sunny Queen" from the Streetmark album "Dry", but this is most certainly a coincidence since this record is barely known. The melody is so inviting that several people most certainly are able to use it independently). The next break is neither far from this, making a "tapping"-fan, not punished, thinking of the ugly word "Melodic Rock". Naturally, the song concept is not yet finally developed, but you can't buy a record from this band at the present time either. I strongly recommend all readers to download the music which is available in Mp3 format at their web-site.Furthermore the band is looking for contacts and openings for playing at concerts. In my opinion they deserve to find such contacts as fast as possible. If they succeed, I'm sure the world will hear a lot from Magic Pie in the future.
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