Giant Sky is a side-project of a Norwegian musician by the name of Erlend Viken who is, so the blurb tells me, is in a band called Soup.
Erlend kindly sent to me a CD of this new Giant Sky album titled III – it being the third in a trilogy – and released a few days ago.
Now, my knowledge of Norwegian prog is pretty much limited to a couple of Magic Pie albums. And with this album arriving out of the blue via Erlend and AC at Bad Dog Promotions I had no idea what to expect.
The sheet with the CD gave me something of a clue as it stated that with his Giant Sky project, it allows Erland to: “embrace an even wider palette of influences drawing from art rock, post-rock, electronica, ambient music, folk and progressive rock balancing immersive atmospheres with memorable melodies.”
Whilst Erland does pretty much everything, he is joined by a handful of guest musicians.
Then it was time for the first spin. I wasn’t sure about it. Whilst not a bad listen it seemed like an album which needed time to get to grips with what’s going on.
And I was right…..it revealed more with each listen and I now “get it.”
We have the lot going on. Yes, it’s prog though it’s intelligent, well composed and varied in style which after those first few spins all falls in to place and flows together nicely.
Sometimes what you’d call proper prog with atmosphere and well placed keys and synths, sometimes it brings in slightly heavier arrangements and also here and there we have the strings and lush orchestration working in very effectively.
Also the vocals are well paced providing a crisp melodic edge.
If you like this sort of stuff, Giant Sky III will be one you’ll do well to check out.
It’s available in various formats directly from the Giant Sky BandCamp page:
https://giantskyband.bandcamp.com/album/giant-sky-iii
Give it a listen first if you prefer thanks to the code to embed from the BandCamp page:
There is an accompanying album – The Further We Go, The Deeper it Gets – which is due for release on 16 October.
Thanks to AC and Erland for sending the review copy over to me.
Please support the site and buy me a coffee.
https://buymeacoffee.com/nwobhm
As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.