Dazed #19: "Defragments" is a classy 2nd album for Parzival's Eye

Germany's RPWL are one of my favorites in the current prog scene with their "gentle art of music". The bass player, Chris Postl, released a nice solo project under the moniker Parzival´s Eye back in 2009 and has now gone for a second round with the same brand.

Defragments stays close to the RPWL home base. The musical style is an amalgam of (very roughly) Floyd, Beatles and indie guitar rock, with that hard-to-define RPWL spicing. It's warm, friendly, human and open and I like it a lot.

Sometimes deceptively simple, the songs are very well crafted and arranged. They are usually unhurried, sometimes even langurous exercises in nuance. The album does have two longer and proggier pieces, both solid and controlled. 

The surprise of the album is a nice acoustic cover of Yes' Long Distance Runaround - the version may not bring all that much new to the original but it's honest and fresh. Much the same can be said for Defragments as a whole: it's one of the year's most pleasant prog releases.

My rating: 4/5

Listen to Defragments on Spotify:

http://open.spotify.com/album/0ypMKwHXMCCPwKkImddKqr