Zsolt Dezsõ Murguly founded D Sound in 1992, but because of some musical differences in the band they split up in 1994. Between 1999 and 2002 Murguly recorded some compositions of the past ten years with other musicians. This was the basis for this mainly instrumental album. The album consists out of four long movements, which can be divided into several tracks. But the structure of the album presents the movements as one long piece of music with a continuous pulsating characteristic.
The first movement "Kisember" (21:33) opens with a theme called "Budafok" (5:02). The atmosphere of this piece, especially the guitar sound has some resemblance of Janos Varga on his "The wings of revelation I" album, which also was released on the same Hungarian label Periferic Records. The themes of the album interweave and this one seamless goes into "Hold 1" (5:28) which is more up-tempo and has besides the vocals also some guitar solo's. The bases of the tracks are the keyboards, which provide an underlying symphonic layer. And on top of that layer the guitar plays the melodies. "Blues 2000" (4:39) is more a ballad and the vocals are again sung in Hungarian. I can't help it to think of Pink Floyd when I hear this track. Last theme of this first movement is also entitled "Kisember" (6:22). The pulsating keyboard programming holds the symphonic keyboard strings and guitar parts together. Right at the moment when you think that the music becomes a little bit boring because of the repeating patterns the guitar melodies change a little bit.
The second movement has the name "Mi van a hold túlsó felén" (14:11). "Hold 2" (4:28) is mainly based on guitars. Different layers of guitar sounds lies on top of each other. In the end are some heavy rock influences. After the keyboards intro of "Frog's final day" (4:16) the music becomes again more heavy and up-tempo. "Hold 3" (5:27) is more or less the sequel of "Hold 2". This second movement is not my favourite one, mainly because of the heavy guitar bits. D Sound is balancing between interesting repeating patterns and boring music.
The third movement "Sodoma" (5:28) is the shortest one of the four. It has nice guitar melodies and symphonic keyboards. Because of putting all the variations in just five minutes this has become one of the more interesting pieces for me.
The forth movement "Otthon" (15:29) exists out of the themes "Otthon" (5:39) which starts with classical piano but develop into Oldfield disco with a screaming guitar solo. "Christine" (4:19) is more in the vein of the first movement "Kisember" but if you don't concentrate on listening to the music it will become boring I think. The last theme is called "Without worlds" (5:31) and it starts with classical vocals sung by Vargáné Papp Liza. In the end there is a nice melodic guitar solo.
I have mixed feelings with this album. It is all well done and there are nice guitar patterns and keyboard sounds. But often the music is close to become boring. The intriguing thing is that this never really happens to me. But I like to listen to music with a lot of concentration because I don't want to miss something. So I could imagine that some people will find the music a little bit boring, too much patterns that repeats itself. So you have to listen for yourself I think. My favourite movements are the first one "Kisember" and the third one called "Sodoma". I enjoyed listening to this album and appreciate the special Hungarian releases of the Periferic Records label.

Douwe Fledderus