Release date: 4th March 2022
Moon Over The Flaming Village, the debut album from The Kauppinen Bros. (aka Pasi and Timo Kauppinen of Soundscape favourites Silent Voices) has been a long time in the works – two years, in fact. After the pair were catching up just before the pandemic hit, the two of them both mentioned that they had written some songs that didn’t really fit with any of the bands they played with, so killing two birds with one stone, they decided to release the songs together and The Kauppinen Bros. project came into fruition. An eight-track purely instrumental piece (featuring four songs written by each brother), the pair did everything themselves from writing, recording, mixing and mastering the piece – aside from the drums, which were performed by Tuomas Rauhala.
To put things simply, Moon Over The Flaming Village is an absolute joy to listen to. The flow is coherent, with each track progressing magnificently into the next, and everything fits so well together. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact style of music, as it’s clear there’s influences coming from all over the place – t’s perhaps best described as prog at a push, but only in a very broad sense because it certainly doesn’t make sense to pigeonhole the music to one specific style.
My personal favourite is seventh track Highway 28. Perhaps one of the more ambitious of the album, the soaring melodies give the song a lot of depth, movement and colour, and it features a lead melody that seems destined to get stuck in your head indefinitely. The relaxed vibe to the song as a whole is great, and it almost feels like we are listening in to a mini jamming session. Another honorable mention should go to the track Fire One, which is a slightly faster-paced track that features a really hypnotic Hammond organ melody and some seriously catchy keyboard sections.
Moon Over The Flaming Village is an absolutely magnificent listen. It’s an album you’ll keep wanting to come back to for another round; it’s an addictive piece that really shines bright. I said it earlier in my review, but it needs to be said again – Moon Over The Flaming Village is an absolute joy.
