Band: PRoPoRTIoNS

CD Title: ReBoot

Label: Independent Release (2018)

Rating: Lots of variety that holds up well with repeated listens. Very Cool!

Eleven years ago when I reviewed some music created in part by Andy Kubicki I said – “Inspiration is a funny thing. You just never know where it comes from or what it might lead to.” Andy was involved with a group of musicians who made new music heavily inspired by their passionate love of the band Gentle Giant. Here we are a decade later and Kubicki, along with Lennart Stahle, Tomas Start, Denis Boucher, Baba Elefante, Richard Sheehy and Robert Bennet are still making new music. Their latest release under the band name Proportions is entitled Reboot and it’s a wonderful collection of fourteen instrumental compositions that cover all kinds of proggy musical ground. As expected there are still hints of their original inspiration Gentle Giant in places, but lots of others as well such as Mike Oldfield. Most of these tunes are in three to four minute range but even within that limited time they are able to pack in lots of musicality. Each song is quite different from the other, some sound more angular, some very sweetly melodic, some hint at Celtic and others at a kind of Medieval feel. Others are more or less straight forward soft, fusion styled proggy goodness. This variety comes from the fact that Proportions members are based around the world and each member submits musical ideas to the others using the internet and then each song is added-upon to complete the end result. It’s a method of creating music that seems to work really well here based on the finished results. We get lots of different types of songs, lots of instrumental performance and lots of different moods and tones. It never gets boring because you never know where the next song is coming from and in that regard this is the kind of disc that can spend a lot of time in the player. It’s really good stuff and I really enjoyed it so I recommend you check’em out.