Barbara Rubin - Under The Ice

(CD 2010, 33:51, BTF)

The tracks:
  1- Under The Ice
  2- The Land
  3- Angel Heartbeat
  4- A Place That Nobody Knows
  5- Stupid Day
  6- Liar
  7- Before The Light
  8- Ero E Sono
  9- Music And Love
10- No More Tears
11- Orange Roses

Barbara Rubin Website        samples        BTF Records


Like many other people I like to browse on the internet. Most of all the MySpace website is among my favourites. This site is a great way to discover new music. Thanks to Myspace I actually discovered the great music made by Barbara Rubin. I do not mean the American filmmaker who shocked the world in 1963 with her 27 minutes avant-garde movie Christmas On Earth. No, this fantastic musician comes from Italy and made music with Arcansiel and Paolo Baltaro and is currently the lead singer for the progmetal band Lore WeaveR. What struck me the most when I heard some sound samples of her debut album Under The Ice, was this brilliant voice on every track. It made me think of Lana Lane and Ann Wilson (Heart). But when she sent me the album for a review, I noticed that the music on Under The Ice has much more real progressive rock elements than the two ladies mentioned before have on their albums. The main reason is that Barbara has a classical background and studied on a conservatory. She wrote all her songs herself and can play a real instrument. It certainly helps a lot to write strong progressive rock music if you can handle a piano, violin, viola or a synth pad in a proper way. Maybe the album is too short with a length of half an hour. But when you play the CD you actually never get the impression that it might be too short. This is mainly because all the songs are brought with a lot of passion and emotion and have enough variety. You might think that the only song she sings in her own language would have been the track with the most elements of passion and emotions. But that’s not the case at all. On Ero E Sono I heard the same strong emotions as on tracks such as Angel Heartbeat or A Place That Nobody Knows. On a lot of the tracks you get the feeling that you hear a real orchestra. It certainly gives the album a classical feeling from time to time. Good examples are the instrumental track The Land and the short piece Before The Light. Barbara told me that she created this orchestral sound on her violin and viola and with the help of Claudia Ravetto on cello. Most of the songs are very mellow and you can say that the most aggressive piece on the album is probably the track No More Tears. Not the famous Ozzy Osbourne song, but still it has enough elements that show why she can sing in a progmetal band such as Lore WeaveR. The most important person that helped Barbara to record this fantastic album is without any doubt Simone Morandotti. His fine solo synthesizer parts are very tasteful. Most of all on A Place That Nobody Knows and Lair you can hear that he has the right feeling to make it sound beautiful. Simone also played some of the guitar parts and some Hammond organ. The drums that we can hear on a few tracks were taken from a computer, but I must admit they sounded very real. Finally I have to say that the album that deals about tolerance, love, family, nature and the things we have lost, had a big impact on me. I loved this emotional album, that took two years and six months to make, a lot. Creative talents such as Barbara Rubin don’t grow on trees and therefore we should cherish them very much.

**** Henri Strik (edited by Astrid de Ronde)

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