The internet can be an abyss. Oh, I'm not talking about the plethora of shallow content we (humans collectively, not necessarily you or I) are drawn to like... moths to a flame, ants to sugar... I just mean, that as time marches on, the past can be buried 20 "pages" deep on a search engine result set. Especially if you don't quite know how to query what you want.

Even as it's true that once something is posted to the Internet, it's there forever.... not always as you might expect.

To the point: in updating our interview pages, I came across a broken link. And it saddened me. One likes to think of the immortality of the internet, and yet... it can sometimes be gone. With the click of a button, poof. Pages deleted, the URL an empty shell. Or someone else buys the URL and you get to something... quite different.

This lament is my discovery that Prog4You no longer exists. Well, it exists... in as much as someone else owns the URL as a site that now has something to do with relationships. I didn't linger...

Prog4You was a music review website started up by RoSFest founder George Roldan. I imagine the success and time-investment with that - yay, George! - and also running the site became... too much. No criticism of George, mind you, just a speculation of what happened between 2007 and now. And honestly, I don't know when it happened, but it happened. The internet is not immutable.

And yet, there's the Wayback Machine - web site dedicated to preserving, to some extent, the web. And yay for that! Because I was able to recover the one item I was looking for.... In 2006 we published an interview with Ghost Circus' Chris Brown (not the pop artist, mind). In it, Joshua Turner's review of the Cycles CD was mentioned, we linked to it. (Joshua is not the country artist, note).

Since Joshua's review was once a companion piece to this article, and, like the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org), I like to preserve the past - below I republish the "lost review." Why here and not in the interview -- which can be found here (pt 1) and here (pt 2) -- well... both are lengthy (like this editorial, I suppose)...

If either Joshua or George request it, I will remove it; if George permits it to be added to our main review content, I shall (the latter an offer for any "lost gems" once published there).

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Ghost Circus - Cycles (2006, ProgRock Records)

I read the most amazing piece of trivia about this band. The album was made by artists across the Atlantic (that would be Ronald Wahle of the Netherlands along with Chris Brown of Tennessee).

You would never know it was done this way by the quality of the album. It would appear as if its members were in the same room as they wrote and played the material. Instead of brainstorming their ideas across a table and then jamming in the studio, they are literally apparitions to one another. I'm not even sure if they've actually met in the flesh. Regardless, there is no ghost in this machine. Rather, it's as alive and fresh as if they were playing together in person.

Plus, the production is surprisingly spotless. Either the software has gotten this good or they are plugged into The Matrix. Aside from that, I can't explain how anybody could make any album over the Internet that's this pristine.

To my ears it sounds most like RPWL, Jadis, and Big Wreck. It's progressively sensible in that rock-oriented way. The guitars are a combination of Dave Gilmour and Gary Chandler. The drums could be Chris Maitland or Andy Edwards. Not to mention, the singing is quite respectable for a Progressive Rock band.

Additionally, they have several strong tracks and once you’ve heard it more than once, you'll see that some themes cleverly comeback. I like "Accelerate" and "Let It Flow" and the two-part mini-epic "Mass Suggestions," which concludes the album, is pretty cool, too. My favorite song overall is probably "Trick Of The Light." While it's not exactly "Trick Of The Tail" or "Fading Lights," it does provide a Modern Genesis vibe.

Moreover, they have a song called "The Distance" that specifically refers to the physical disparity between its players. It confirms the fact that geographical differences are no longer an excuse to keep a collaboration from happening.

In any case, it's ironic that the source of this material is from both here and there. While some of it comes from overseas there is no participant who is the Weakest Link in these chains. As they say, it's the best of both worlds.

8.5/10

Tracks:

1. Broken Glass
2. Cycles
3. Trick Of The Light
4. The Distance
5. Accelerate
6. Let It Flow
7. Send/Return
8. Mass Suggestion (Part 1)
9. Mass Suggestion (Part 2)

copyright © Nov 2006 by Joshua Turner/Prog4You

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A further note - there was a part three to the interview published at Prog4You... that is not part of the archive... Part 2 published at USAProgressive.com is still active.

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Published on: 2015-09-10 (6414 reads)