Starsabout -
Longing For Home


(CD 2017, 46:11, Progressive Promotion Records, PPRCD058)

The tracks:
Longing For Home (2017)
  1- Blue Caress(6:34)
  2- Longing For Home(5:06)
  3- Cry Me No Tears(7:10)
  4- Hourglass(5:30)
  5- Stay(4:17)
  6- I Will Never(4:29)
  7- Thief(4:27)
  8- Million Light Years(8:38)

Starsabout - Halflight

(CD 2016, 48:41, Progressive Promotion Records, PPRCD0057)

The tracks:
Halflight (2016)
  1- Halflight(6:06)
  2- Every Single Minute(6:06)
  3- The Night(4:55)
  4- Black Rain Love(7:02)
  5- Escaped(5:48)
  6- Sway(5:02)
  7- 20.000 Miles(5:47)
  8- Bluebird(7:55)

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Starsabout is a band from Poland. They come from Bialystok and the band was formed in January 2012. The band consists of Piotr Trypus (guitars & vocals), Tomasz Kryjan (guitar), Piotr Ignatowicz (bass) and Sergiusz Pruszynski (drums). There are guest appearances by Piotr Polak (guitars), Pawel Ambrozewicz (keyboards) and Natasza Topor (violin).

First I want to look at the debut album Halflight from 2016, which I received together with Longing For Home, as if it was a present for the reviewer. The Halflight disc is a reissue. I do not understand what happened in this reissue at all because I hear a lot of distortion in the tracks, except at the songs The Night and Black Rain Love. Because of the distortion I cannot give an objective judgement because it eliminates the listening pleasure. I have listened to the whole disc a few times, but it was not easy to listen to music that has this level of distortion, too bad.

Then it is the turn of the second album, Looking For Home. We are dealing here with music in the style of Airbag and Pink Floyd. Sometimes I hear a bit of Chris Isaak. Above all, I hear a lot of emotion in the music.

Longing For Home starts with Blue Caress. It starts with keys and violin, tension is what I feel. After half a minute we say hello to the rhythm section and guitar parts. It sounds instantly melodic and when the singer starts singing, a blissful feeling comes to you. You sink away in this nice atmosphere. If the music fades away I got the thought 'no, not now, let this piece of music go on for a while.

The music is linked to pop music. I certainly recognize a little bit of U2 in the music, only with a somewhat more sensitive singer and some more dreamy music. As described earlier, it comes close to Airbag, but Starsabout make virtually no use of keyboards.

After Blue Caress it is time for Longing For Home, which starts with a wonderful guitar part. I find the vocals and guitar parts strong, the rhythm section a lot less because it sounds a bit monotonous to me.

In Cry Me No Tears there is a trailing guitar solo at the end. Hourglass has an acoustic intro. Also in this track it is all about the emotion of the vocalist.

Stay and I Will Never have some more up tempo passages. Where in Stay the vocalist has the main role when he sings 'the world is burning', what an emotion, this touches you, together with the guitar parts, lovely! In the track Stay there is a lot of variety.

Thief is a real pop song, laid back music. For me it is the least strong track of the album. The disc closes with the longest track, Million Light Years. The title sounds atmospheric, like the music is, sometimes a little directionless, but it all sounds okay to me.

If I had to give a summary of what I hear in the music, it seems as if the band chooses not to put drums and bass in a too complicated way, so that the emphasis is more on the emotion through singing and guitar. In addition, at a given moment the different tracks are similar to each other because the singer shows too much repetition. When the band would show more variation in the songs, I feel that this music could mean a broader audience in the progressive rock scene.

*** Michel Stolk (edited by Tracy van Os van den Abeelen)

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