Rikk Eccent "The Garden Of Delights"

Country: Finland
Sub Genre: Art Rock, Ambient
Label: Presence Records
Release date: March 4, 2013
Tracklist: 

1. The Garden of Delights (Intro) (1:26)
2. The Road To The Oblivion (5:33)
3. Freefallin' (5:39)
4. Lone Kid Wolf (6:09)
5. Money Pie (5:27)
6. It Will All Make Sense In The End (3:59)
7. Hard Work (5:15)
8. Nexus (8:31)

Line-up: 
Kimmo Salmela - all instruments and vocals

Description/Reviews: 

Rikk Eccent is the brainchild of Kimmo Salmela, whose guitar and keyboard skills helped to define the sound of bands as diverse as Poverty Stinks, Päät and JSS, in addition to his work behind many leading Finnish artists. On the album 'The Garden of Delights', he delivers music like nothing else: a bit like Steely Dan songs played by a guitar-driven Depeche Mode, produced by David Gilmour and mixed by Mark 'Spike' Stent. It's experimental but focused; atmospheric but not dreamy at all; highly edgy but deeply poetic at the same time. The lyrics are a revelation in themselves: kind of short stories squeezed into the condensed format of a rock song . Each one is a piece of smart and accurate social observation, dripping with black humour, covering themes like greed, corruption, alienation and loss of innocence while bearing a strange sense of redemption.
The songs are populated with fictional characters who usually get to tell their stories in the first person. The soulful vocals really bring alive this bunch of oddballs, who on this record seem to be specializing in saying goodbye to all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. Every character, whether sweet or shady, is treated with a touch of heartfelt empathy, which helps us to see them as they really are: fairly ordinary human beings, nothing more or less.
And the music? Expect deft guitar work and sweeping keyboards (it's often hard to tell which is which) gracing organic-sounding performances of tight songs, all set to an ambient surrounding. Some people have pidgeonholed this music under the prog label. Well, it's that in the sense that it pushes back the boundaries of contemporary music a bit. But as with the music of, say, Radiohead, it's hard to put this stuff under any definite category.
So just take a listen and find out for yourself – at least if you're into cerebral lyrics, accomplished songwriting, skilled musicianship, and sonic experimentation in general.

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