Category Archives: Record Reviews

Album, EP and DVD reviews, with an emphasis on the UK progressive rock scene.

Storm Corrosion

Storm Corrosion is the much anticipated Anglo-Swedish collaborative project between two of the biggest names in the contemporary progressive rock world, Opeth mainman Mikael Åkerfeldt and Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree and myriad side-projects. While initial expectations might have been that they were going to do something along the lines of the prog-metal of their respective bands’ recent work, they soon made it clear it was going to be something altogether different.

The lengthy, atmospheric and sinister-sounding opener “Drag Ropes” sets the tone. With dominant sounds of acoustic guitar and mellotron plus piano, strings and woodwind it comes over as a soundtrack of a particularly spooky film, probably shot in grainy black-and-white. The film probably has subtitles, and everyone dies at the end.

It’s a record that owes as much to classical and folk music as it does to rock, and manages to combine a stripped-down minimalism with an ambitious cinematic scope. Save for one clattering outburst on “Hag”, accompanied by the only powerchords on the entire album, there is very little in the way of conventional rock drumming. But despite those dissonant strings and even the odd outbreak of pure white noise, it’s by no means an impenetrable record. It does need a few listens to fully appreciate it’s subtleties, which means it’s something you can listen to many times and keep discovering something new. It’s a work filled with moments of delicate beauty, whether it’s vocal harmonies or the sparse acoustic and electric guitar work.

There are elements of both musician’s other work, from Steve Wilson’s solo work to Opeth’s “Heritage” and “Damnation”. Parts of the instrumental “Lock Howl”, built around a rhythm loop and swirling keyboards recalls mid-period Tangerine Dream before giving way to percussion loops and disturbing discordant strings. There is also something of Talk Talk’s classic “Spirit of Eden” in it’s eschewing of conventional song structures in favour of soundscapes and textures, and that comparison is especially apparent on the dreamy closing track “Ljudet Innen”. There is also a bit of the spirit of Radiohead’s “Kid A” in it’s refusal to make any compromise towards commerciality or pander to audience expectations. In the unlikely event that you were still expecting Blackwater Park meets In Absentia, this is not the record you were looking for.

What we have is the sound of two of the progressive rock world’s most talented individuals following their combined muses wherever it takes them. It takes them and their listeners through some strange and exotic sonic landscapes, and it’s a more than worthwhile journey for anyone who chooses to follow. Bold and experimental, but still remaining accessible, it’s a genuinely progressive record in the true sense of the word.

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Mostly Autumn – The Ghost Moon Orchestra Launch Party

Saturday May 12th saw two hundred of Mostly Autumn’s hardcore fans gather at The Post Office Social Club in their home town of York for the launch party of their new album “The Ghost Moon Orchestra”. A lot of familiar faces present, many of whom I hadn’t seen for ages. Previous album launches, such as the Heart Full of Sky launch at The Astoria in 2007 had taken the form of a high profile showcase gig. This one, in more intimate surroundings had a rather different format.

Things started with a short live set from the band. Well, most of the band, since they played as a semi-acoustic five-piece minus Andy Smith and Gavin Griffiths. Bryan Josh played acoustic guitar throughout, but Iain Jennings play more than just piano parts on keys, and Liam Davison did some electric lead parts. Anne-Marie Helder doubled up on flute and percussion (is there no instrument she cannot play?). The set consisted entirely of stripped-down reworkings of existing material with no completely new numbers, drawing very heavily from “Passengers” including a great flute-heavy “Pass the Clock”. Other highlights were “Second Hand” from “Glass Shadows” with some very atmospheric lead guitar from Liam, and Livvy’s oldie “Rain Song”, played as a trio with piano and flute. It had been the band’s original intention to play the bonus disk “A Weather For Poets” in their entirety, including some new songs. Unfortunately several of the band were ill in the days immediately before the gig, and there wasn’t enough time to rehearse them. Still, it was interesting to hear fresh takes of those older numbers.

The second part of the evening was a playback of the album through the PA, at something approaching concert volumes, with various members of the band scattered among the audience. It’s difficult to judge an album properly on just two listens, especially for a band of Mostly Autumn’s musical scope. So this shouldn’t be taken as a proper review, which will have to wait until I’ve got hold of the CD when it ships in a few weeks time. Rather it’s my immediate first impressions.

The album starts with a very dynamic and very immediate opening number that reminds me of European symphonic metal bands like Sonata Arctica or Nightwish, and things continue in that vein. There are a couple of Deep Purple sounding songs awash with Hammond organ. There are one or two quieter moments, with a bit of Anne-Marie’s flute, and yet again there’s some Uilleann pipes, presumably from Troy Donockley.

But the overall feel is something heavier and more contemporary-sounding than anything they’ve done before. I wouldn’t have used the word “metal” to describe anything Mostly Autumn have done in the past. This is an album which, if properly marketed, could win over a significant crossover fanbase from the metal community.

Livvy’s vocals are amazing; there is a lot of material that makes full use of her power and range, and sounds utterly unlike anything Heather would have sung. If Go Well Diamond Heart emphasised Bryan’s guitar, this one’s far more about Livvy’s vocals. There are performances here in the same league as the likes of Within Temptation’s Sharon Den Adel.

This is the sound of a very different and re-invented Mostly Autumn. While I liked a lot of “Go Well Diamond Heart” and reviewed it favourably at the time, hearing the new one makes you realise how much the band had been playing it safe for their first album with a new lead singer. Now they’re showing what they can really do. Not only can I not wait until I get the CD so I can hear it again, but I can’t wait to see it all performed live when the band tour in September.

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The Reasoning – And Another Thing

The news of the disappearance of guitarist Owain Roberts, and the huge and ongoing fan campaign to spread the word and help find him has rather overshadowed the fact that the band have a new record out. Indeed, the band sent out the signed pre-order copies just days before he disappeared.

Although the band released a live album “The Bottle of Gettysburg” in 2011, and the album of reworkings of existing songs “Acoustically Speaking” late in 2010, this four track EP is the first release of all-new material since “Adverse Camber” two years ago. It’s also the first studio recording by the slimmed-down five piece version of the band with Owain Roberts as sole guitarist and Rachel Cohen as sole lead vocalist.

The opener “One By One” sets the tone. Beginning with chiming guitar and a vocal melody with an echo of their earlier “Dark Angel”, it combines atmospheric verses with a rockier chorus and a brief instrumental break of interplaying guitar and keys. It’s all over in less than four minutes, but seems to pack an awful lot of music into so short a time. In contrast, “Pale Criminal” is an out-and-out ballad. With another beautiful vocal melody from Rachel Cohen it’s a song that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Karnataka’s “Delicate Flame of Desire”.

“Apophenia” and “20 Grams” round off the EP in similar vein, mid-tempo numbers combining delicate vocal melodies with restrained instrumental virtuosity from Owain Roberts and keyboardist Tony Turrell. Lyrics cover things like “the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data” and Duncan MacDougall’s rather strange theories of the weight of the human soul. Not your typical rock’n'roll fare at all.

The whole EP has a softer, more pared-back sound, with shorter songs reining in the prog-metal excesses of their recent past. There’s still plenty of depth in the arrangements, with a few nods to latter-day Marillion and Rush. But now Rachel Cohen’s vocals are given much more space to breathe, no longer in any danger of being swamped by the instrumentation. It’s a case of less being more. Even if none of the four songs quite reach the highest points of the first two albums, the result is nevertheless a more coherent and focussed effort than their last studio album, and it takes a very different musical direction from their early work.

The band are back in the studio now recording a full-length album slated for release in September, which will be the band’s first release under their new record deal Esoteric Antenna. In the meantime, this EP, their last self-released recording under the imprint of Comet Records, is available from the band’s website.

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Mermaid Kiss – Circles of Fire

It’s been a long time since there’s been any activity from the Mermaid Kiss camp, but they’ve just released a new download single, “Circles of Fire”. It’s taken from their forthcoming album “Another Country”, the culmination of their “American Images” project.

Those of you who saw the semi-acoustic version of the band supporting Panic Room, Breathing Space or The Reasoning back in 2008 may well remember this song, as it featured in the live set. It’s a great showcase for Evelyn Downing’s very distinctive vocal style, Although acoustic instruments still feature heavily with Jamie Field’s guitar and Wendy Marks’ beautiful flute playing, here it’s expanded into a full band version culminating in a great solo from lead guitarist Pete West. As a slightly harder-edged Mermaid Kiss with more emphasis on guitar compared with the keyboard-led atmospherics of their last full-length album “Etarlis”, it’s in interesting taster for the forthcoming album.

It’s available for download from CD Baby.

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Top Ten Songs of 2011

We’ve had my ten top albums of the year, here’s my top ten songs. Not being a fan of top-40 style singles, almost all of these are album tracks – in fact there’s only one single on the entire list.

As is usual for this sort of thing, it’s a completely personal and subjective list. But I’d much rather listen to any of these than any X-factor bollocks, and so should you. So there!

10: Yes – Fly From Here
The title track of Yes’ most recent album saw the “Drama” team of Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn return with a much-expanded version of what started life as an unrecorded Buggles song. I suppose calling a five-part prog-rock epic taking up half an album a “song” is cheating, but I’m setting the rules here, and this is certainly the best thing Yes have recorded for years.

9: Journey – Edge of the Moment
One of the standout songs from “Eclipse”, this classy hard rocker is a great example of the other side of Journey’s music from the radio-friendly ballads.

8: Blood Ceremony – Daughter of the Sun
The ten-minute epic that closes track of their second album “Living With the Ancients” is a great example of why I’ve described them as sounding like Black Sabbath fronted by Angela Gordon, with it’s combination of bewitching flute and doom-laden guitar.

7: Mostly Autumn – Questioning Eyes
It’s not a completely new song (It originally appeared on Breathing Space’s 2008 album “Below the Radar”), but the powerful live version on “Still Beautiful” rises to even greater heights. It shows the extent to which Olivia Sparnenn has grown as a vocalist in the past three years.

6: Mastodon – The Sparrow
The multi-layered ballad with it’s rich harmonies is my clear favourite from “The Hunter”. Probably because it’s the most prog thing on the album.

5: Liam Davison – Heading Home
Liam’s long-awaited solo album “A Treasure of Well-Set Jewels” was one of the surprises of 2011, a well-crafted album with a very capable supporting cast. This song is a standout with it’s wonderful interplay between Liam’s soaring lead guitar, Iain Jennings’ swirling Hammond organ and Paul Teasdale’s propulsive bass riff.

4: Panic Room – O Holy Night
A welcome and unexpected end-of-year surprise was this spine-tingling version of the traditional carol released as a free Christmas download from their website.

3: Heather Findlay – Seven
Heather’s solo EP “The Phoenix Suite” took quite a few listens to fully appreciate, and once the record finally clicked, this atmospheric and brooding number became the firm favourite.

2: Opeth – Folklore
The dramatic closing section on this song with the galloping bass riff has to be one of the most exciting pieces of music I’ve heard all year.

1: Steven Wilson – Raider II
Another lengthy prog epic is my “song” of the year. With its swirling Mellotron and spiralling sax and flute it sounds like a cross between 70s King Crimson and Canterbury-scene jazz-rock dragged into the 21st century, and the heaviest sections are the bits without guitars. Amazing piece of music.

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Top Ten Albums of 2011

2011 has been an incredible year for new music. In fact, I can’t remember another year when I bought so many new release, which makes the traditional end-of-year list especially hard this time round.

So, after much deliberation and consideration, here’s my completely personal and subjective list of ten best albums released in 2011.

10: Uriah Heep – Into the Wild
70s veterans Uriah Heep have undergone something of a renaissance in recent years. Even if this album doesn’t really break any radically new ground for them, with their trademark combination of searing guitar and Hammond organ they rock far harder than any band in their fifth decade of existence has any right to.

9: Steve Hackett – Beyond the Shrouded Horizon
Much like Uriah Heep, the former Genesis guitarist has hit something of a purple patch recently, with his third album in two years. It’s a rich, ambitious album that combines some heartfelt songwriting with his distinctive symphonic liquid guitar style that has rightfully made him the godfather of prog guitar.

8: Anathema – Falling Deeper
A largely instrumental set by Liverpool’s Doom-metallers-turned-proggers, containing radical orchestral reworkings of material from their earlier metal years. It’s an album for which you should sit back and let the huge atmospheric soundscapes wash over you.

 

7: Touchstone – The City Sleeps
The rising stars of the British female-fronted progressive rock scene deliver a strong third album, with a highly melodic mix of prog, hard rock and metal than builds on the success of their previous album “Wintercoast”.

 

6: Within Temptation – The Unforgiving
In which the Dutch band opt out of the symphonic metal arms race in favour of a far more rock-orientated album that emphasises Sharon den Adel’s incredibly powerful vocals over overblown arrangements. More varied than previous albums, there’s an emphasis on big anthemic choruses that ought to have a lot of crossover potential.

5: Chantel McGregor – Like No Other
Chantel’s debut album proves she’s far more than just a virtuoso guitarist, and far more than just a blues artist. It’s a hugely varied album demonstrating her talents as a singer-songwriter who can do hard rock, folk and pure pop as well as she can do blues-rock guitar wig-outs.

4: Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn of Events
The band which more or less invented prog-metal deliver their best album for years, proving that Mike Portnoy’s departure, far from finishing the band, has given them the kick up the backside they needed, with more emphasis on composition than instrumental showboating.

3: Liam Davison – A Treasure of Well-Set Jewels
The solo album from Mostly Autumn’s second guitarist was an unexpected surprise, with some great songwriting and big atmospheric arrangements reminiscent of the early years of Mostly Autumn. Great guest performances from supporting cast including Iain Jennings, Gavin Griffiths, Anne-Marie Helder and Heather Findlay, but none steal the spotlight from Liam’s own contributions.

2: Steven Wilson – Grace for Drowning
With his second solo release, Steve Wilson has taken a step away from the metal stylings of recent Porcupine Tree albums in favour of swirling Mellotrons and spiralling saxophones. The resulting jazz-tinged album sounds like a cross between 70s King Crimson, Canterbury-scene prog, and the ghost of Porcupine Tree past.

1: Opeth – Heritage
Sweden’s finest drop the death metal growls and go all-out prog with perhaps the most musically ambitious album they’ve done to date. Far more varied than their earlier non-metal “Damnation”, it manages to sound both gloriously retro and absolutely contemporary at the same time.

With such a strong year, there are many more great albums that would have appeared in many years’ top tens, so honourable mentions for Also Eden’s progtastic “Think of the Children” Magenta’s excellent “Chameleon”, Matt Stevens unclassifiable instrumental “Relic”, very solid releases from veterans Yes, Journey and Megadeth, and Mastodon’s “The Hunter”.

I’ve also made the decision to exclude live albums, but I will mention Mostly Autumn’s powerful “Still Beautiful”, Heather Findlay and Chris Johnson’s beautiful “Live at the Café 68″, and The Reasoning’s hard rocking “The Bottle of Gettysburg”.

And there are a few albums I’ve yet to hear, and since it’s too close to Christmas to be buying albums for myself. So the reason for the absence of Nightwish’s “Imaginaerum”, Kate Bush’s “50 Words for Snow” and Morpheus Rising’s “Let The Sleeper Awake” is not that I don’t think they’re good enough, only that I haven’t heard them yet. Perhaps, for the purposes of end-of-year lists, the year should run December to November, so that late-year releases count as next year?

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Heather Findlay and Chris Johnson – Live at the Café 68

“Live at the Café 68″ is York singer-songwriter Heather Findlay’s second release since leaving as lead singer of Mostly Autumn in 2010. Recorded before an intimate audience of just thirty people, it’s a stripped-down acoustic album featuring fellow singer-songwriter Chris Johnson on guitar and vocals.

It’s explicitly billed as a duo rather than a Heather Findlay solo project, and includes as many Chris Johnson-penned songs as it does Heather’s, drawn both from Chris’ time in Mostly Autumn and from a couple of his myriad other projects.

The album captures the atmosphere of the evening with a lot of between songs banter and the audience very prominent in the mix. If anything, the audience is perhaps a little too prominent, in that it reminds those of us who weren’t able to be there what we missed.

Opener “Phoenix” is the sole song taken from Heather’s début solo EP, with Heather singing the instrumental parts in the intro. It works so well in simplified acoustic form it feels as if that was the way the song was originally intended to be performed.

Without the power and energy of a full band, there’s nowhere for anyone to hide, and the whole thing stands on the quality of the songs and the performance. Heather has always been a class act as a vocalist, hitting that sweet spot balancing precision with emotional depth, whether it’s fronting the full-blown wall of sound of Mostly Autumn, or the more mellow and delicate acoustic vibes of Odin Dragonfly. The feel here is much closer to the latter. Chris Johnson also deserves a lot of credit for his guitar playing, adding far more richness and depth than you often get from a single acoustic guitar. It’s also interesting hearing Heather using wordless vocals to replace instrumental parts, such as the original clarinet line on “Blue Light”.

Apart from a cover of Gillian Welch’s “Dear Someone”, which is perhaps the weakest song on the entire album, the rest of the set is made up of reworkings of older songs from Heather’s and Chris’ respective songbooks. There are a couple of Mostly Autumn standards in “Caught in a Fold” and “Evergreen”, the latter working especially well acoustically. “Gaze”, a song originally hidden away on the bonus disk of Mostly Autumn’s “Heart Full of Sky” is sublime, as is the Odin Dragonfly number “Magpie”. The latter is a great example of Chris’ subtle but effective guitar playing, effortlessly combining the flute and guitar lines of the original into a single guitar part.

Although the focus is on Heather’s vocals with Chris Johnson adding harmonies, he does get to sing lead on a couple of songs, one being the jaunty “Out of Season”, originally by his band The Evernauts. The other, the dark and intense take on “The Dogs” from Chris’s project Halo Blind (née Parade) is one of the highlights, performed as a duet with Heather taking the lines originally sung by Anne-Marie Helder on the record, and ending with a few bars of Heather’s own “Red Dust”.

The Mostly Autumn number “Silver Glass” closes the album. The original version from “Heart Full of Sky” had been a piano-led number with Chris Johnson singing lead. Transposed from piano to guitar, and with Heather taking on the lead vocal, it turns into a spine-tingling performance that makes you wonder why Heather never sung lead on the original. Not that there’s anything wrong with Chris’ original vocal, but hearing Heather sing it lifts the song to another level.

Although I was unable to be there for the recording, people I’ve spoken to tell me it was a quite remarkable experience, and his record manages to capture a lot of that magic. There’s certainly something of the chill-out vibe of Odin Dragonfly’s “Offerings” on display here, and I think it’s fair to say that if you liked that album, you’ll probably like this. But there’s also a far greater emphasis here on Heather’s and Chris’ talents as songwriters, both with keen ears for very strong and memorable melodies.

“Live at the Café 68″ will be available for order from www.heatherfindlay.net from November 14th

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Lou Reed & Metallica – Lulu

When I first heard the preview track “The View”, my first reaction was “What on Earth were Reed and Metallica thinking”? If you’re going to recite words over a rock backing, someone like William Shatner does that sort of thing far better.

Despite lyrics which have been described as sounding like the work of a 14 year old Goth, and an utterly uninspired sludge-metal backing, The View is by far the best thing on it. I have listened to the whole album all the way through (only the once, mind you), so that you don’t have to.

It’s awful.

There is no absolutely no evidence of the rhythmic inventiveness that made Metallica the genre-defining act of the 1980s on display on this record. I was tempted to say their contribution makes Load sound like Master of Puppets. But that would be most unfair on Load.  Much of what we have never rises beyond the level of formless jams which don’t deserve to be dignified by the word “song”. There’s no energy to any of it, either Hetfield’s sloppy tuneless strumming or Lars Ulrich’s appallingly half-arsed drumming.

The combination of Lou Reed’s incoherent and endless ramblings about sex and death and Urlich’s lumpen thud-thud-thud drumming is the sound of a ranting drunk at the bus stop fronting a broken cement mixer. And that’s the best bits.

I am entirely unsure as to what purpose this record serves. Is the whole thing an elaborate practical joke, and if so, at whose expense? Certainly the metal community has decided more or less unanimously decided that the emperor isn’t even trying to pretend he’s wearing any clothes here. Not being a Lou Reed fan, I have no idea if any of them will claim it a work of genius, just to be perverse.

This is a terrible record which will do nothing for the legacy of either artist.

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Sankara – Enigma

Sankara is the band formed by vocalist and keyboard player Gareth Jones and drummer Vinden Wylde, both formerly of The Reasoning, and guitarist Jay McDonald, formerly of The Bluehorses, with bassist Rhayn Jooste completing the lineup. “Enigma” is their first release.

The four track EP gets off to a strong start with the opening title track. Building from a piano arpeggio to a big soaring chorus the end result is a song you just can’t get out of your head. This and the following hard rocker “Exalted Star” with it’s growling riff and multi-layered vocal harmonies recall bands like Styx before they descended into cheese. The ballad “Lay My Body Down” is perhaps the weakest of the four songs, never really coming to life despite some good guitar work from Jay towards the end, but the EP ends on a high note with the hard rock of “Full Flow”.

This highly melodic mix of hard rock and AOR ballads is quite a way from the prog-metal leanings of Gareth’s and Vinden’s previous band. But there are still definite echoes of some of Gareth Jones’ earlier songwriting contributions for them, and his accomplished vocals prove he’s more than capable of fronting his own band, not that it was really in any doubt. On this disk he sings all the harmonies as well as lead, which makes me wonder how they’ll reproduce the songs live; I guess it depends on how well the rest of the band can cope on backing vocals.

This is a promising start for the band. Even if the production isn’t slick and polished, the quality of the songs and playing shine through, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing more good things from them in the coming months and years.

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Opeth – Heritage

Sweden’s Opeth have proved themselves one of the most original and creative prog-metal bands of the past decade. On recent albums such as “Ghost Reveries” and “Watershed” Mikael Åkerfeldt and his band balanced moments of delicate beauty with moments of brutal heaviness, and it was the way they seamlessly combined the two that was a big part of the appeal.

With their tenth album they could have taken the easy option of trying to repeat a successful formula. But instead they’ve taken an abrupt turn, and done something completely different.

Gone are the death-metal growls. While it still has it’s heavier moments it’s can’t really be described as a metal album. The whole thing has a warm, retro 70s vibe, with echoes of artists as diverse as King Crimson, Frank Zappa and Uriah Heep. There is still much here that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the quieter moments of the last couple of albums, and they still eschew traditional song structures in favour of complex epics with constantly shifting moods. Mikael Åkerfeldt again shows how good a vocalist he can be when he sings in a ‘clean’ style, and he’s got a keen ear for unorthodox but beautiful melodies.

Even with death-metal stripped out, it’s an enormously varied album. It begins with a very simple unaccompanied classical piano piece, a gentle lead-in for the delights to come. The hard rock of “Slither” with it’s barrelling rhythm comes over as a very deliberate homage to Deep Purple, with a riff and solo that’s pure Ritchie Blackmore. Then there’s the strongly jazz-tinged “Nepenthe” and “Hāxprocess”. An undoubted highlight is the penultimate track “Folklore” with a dramatic closing section which has to be one of the most exciting pieces of music I’ve heard all year. It ends, as it began, with an instrumental. The semi-acoustic “Marrow of the Earth” starts out sounding like a Blackmore’s Night piece, but builds to assume a melancholic grandeur beyond the scope of anything that band have done.

While this is likely to disappoint some out-and-out metal fans, this is still a very impressive release, and a strong candidate for progressive rock release of the year. There is endless debate in prog circles as to whether the term should refer to bands who try to capture the actual sound of classic 70s progressive rock, or for bands who evoke the same spirit of adventure of music without boundaries. Opeth are a rare band that fulfil both of these, sounding both unapologetically nostalgic and absolutely contemporary at the same time. Almost nobody else can pull that off as well as Opeth can.

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