Spotlights on: AINUR. A Progressive Rock Orchestra

              
   As you know already in this blog there is a series of posts called 'The Progressive Rock Encyclopedia'. There I usually write about the bigger and most known bands of Progressive Rock.
But there are some bands not so famous, and in my opinion deserve more popularity.
So I present these bands separate in these series of posts. (Although these series are not only for Progressive Rock bands).
Here I will write about the Italian band AINUR.
Ainur is a band consisting of 18 members, and that's why has the title 'A Progressive Rock Orchestra'.
They got their inspiration (and their name) from J.R.R Tolkien's fantastic world, Middle Earth.
To be exact, from the book 'Silmarillion', Tolkien's most ambitious piece of work, where he tries to create a whole new universe, with new Gods, new races, new languages, new fantastic lands etc...
The main idea was to try and transfer into music all these long or short stories that are described in the 'Silmarillion'.
So far they have released 3 very good records: 'From Ancient Times' (2007), 'Children of Hurin' (2008), and 'Lay of Leithian' (2009).

They are considered to be a 'Symphonic Progressive' band, although their music defers on each song, having many influences from Medieval music, Italian traditional rhythms, Celtic melodies, and of course Rock. All these music styles are mixed together in such a way, that we can say that their songs easily could be used as soundtack for any Epic Fantasy movie.
As for their instruments, you can understand the variety that an 18 member- band- offers.
From the classic Rock instruments like Guitars drums bass etc, up to the classical Violin Flutes Cello Harps Horns etc...
As for the singers... Well, they are a lot! Male and female singers, that varies from Barytones to Sopranos.
I believe that Ainur is a really interesting band (or orchestra), that every fan of Tolkien or Progressive Rock (or both), should listen to, mostly because they try to present something different.
I have put 2 videos on this post for you. On the first one you can see a presentation of the band, and on the second you can listen to the song 'The Fall of Gondolin'.
Hope you will like them.
Enjoy! :)