ANTON ROOLAART: The Plight of Lady Oona (2014)

Anton Roolaart is a Dutch born/American raised musician and composer.
  He grew up by listening mostly to Classical music because his father loved it very much, and at the age of 13 decided to study classical guitar. As a teeneager he was exposed to the music of bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis etc, which made him develop a passion for Progressive Rock music. While he was growing up he expanded his musical studies to Jazz guitar, Piano and Drums, and in the year 2007 he released his first personal album named 'Dreamer'. It was a decent and very promising album, but his second one which was released this year is a far better one.
  The title of the album is 'The Plight of Lady Oona' and it comes with a beautiful Fantasy-theme painting on the cover. It contains 6 tracks and has a total running time of almost 45 minutes.
  Anton does most of the work here by himself, including song and lyric writing. But further than that he sings and plays a big variety of instruments including guitars, piano, drums, mandolin, keyboards and bass.
 But he's not only by himself in this. There are many other guest musicians participating in the album, such as the keyboardist Rave Tesar (Renaissance & Annie Haslam), and Annie Haslam herself singing in one song.
 The album's opening song is 'Gravity', a 7-minute-long beautiful and melodic composition which give a first impression to the listener of what's going to follow. Next comes another beautiful piece named 'Stars Fall Down', followed by the album's epic 'The Plight of Lady Oona'. This track is the longest one, with a runing time of almost 14 minutes. Here we listen for the first time the mandolin playing, and also Annie Haslam's beautiful voice, as she is participating as a guest vocalist in this song.
 The 4th track 'Standing in the Rain' is a good one, but it doesn't add something more to the album.
Next comes another beautiful piece, the instrumental 'Memoirs' during which we get an idea about Anton's guitar skills with the magnificent classic guitar intro.
The 6th and last song 'Revealing Light' is following the same melodic and mellow style of the album. It's an 8-minute long song which includes a few flute parts, and has a very good vocal performance by Anton.
  Concluding this post I want to say that I strongly recommend this album not only to the fans of Progressive Rock music, but to all of you who enjoy a well structed album with very beautiful melodies...
My rating would be 3.5 stars out of 5.0