AMAROK

"Neo Way"
(Ars Mundi, 2003)

Very each point a new artist that seems appears that she makes hundred of next years playing. Of those that synthesize with wisdom much of the best thing of a gender. Anyone that there is listening the album last year Amarok, the premiere of Michal Wojtas' band, knows about what I speak. A fascinating trip for different perfectly achieved climates, to which the feeling of the interpretation of the guitar of Wojtas enhanced at surprising levels. It is not chance that that album has been voted among the best in the year in several parts of the world. 

Amarok is in fact almost a project soloist of Wojtas, since he takes charge of the guitars, keyboards, samples and programming in both albums, to the margin of all the compositions, only leaving the battery in hands of Artur Szolc who completes a excellent task along the new album, "Neo Way". 

This disk expresses a deep search for the existence of a new spirituality, and who expresses it. A road to abandon the fears and to transcend. But there of the reasons that take to an artist to sum up a disk, the important thing is the artistic result that derives of that premeditation. And the best in "Neo Way" is the synthesis of the moving thing of much of their music next to the for moments spectacular performance of Wojtas in guitar. Not for anything it compared it to him with Andrew Latimer, David Gilmour, mainly, Mark Knopfler or Mike Oldfield (to remind their influential work Amarok 1990). 

Wojtas is accompanied in this opportunity by Colin Bass, the great bassoonist of Camel, although only in the voice of three of the best topics in the album. The first one is "Up Hill", a rhythmic and delicious ballad that could fit perfectly in certain album of Direv Straits,as "On Every Street", or "Communique". The work of the choirs still grants a more moving tone to the topic that it offers a subtle but fascinating work in guitar. The second collaboration is maybe the best. " ...No More A Roving" it remits to "Watching the Bobbin" sunfailingly of Camel, "Another Brick on the Wall part 2" of Floyd or "One World" of Dire Straits, for its hypnotic tone, of climate loaded with tension, sustained in the impressive work of Szolc in drums. And the third fear together it is "Hope". A topic that it transmits a nearer climate to the Floyd post Waters, to the "Take it Back" of "The Division Bell". This task of Bass who on the other hand received the help of Wojtas in their second album "In the Meantime", it innovates regarding the disk premiere of Amarok, which only offered sporadic vocalizations. 

As brief interludes, and to appreciate the versatile instrumental capacity of Wojtas, the topics "Two Faces" appear that could have been in Steve Howe's disk acoustic soloist, or the beautiful topic for piano "Fifth Mount" that could be Rick Wakeman's outtake. Completing the first part of the disk finds to the opening topic "Dajenu", which offers an interesting crossing with the oriental music, creating a climate of subtle beauty that is opposed to "On the Road", a frantic one instrumental worthy of Mark Knopfler, for the sophisticated use of the textures in the guitar, resource also found in some good moments of Chris Isaak's career. 

The second section of the album is the suite "Neo Way" that consists of seven united topics that form a transcendent collage of sensations, from the power of "Neo Way II", the tribal tone of "Neo Way IV", or the brillant closes with "Neo Way VII", which remits the remarkable Amarok of Oldfield directly. This suite offers certain brief and delicate instants as acoustic interludes that it grants guessed right balance with the most energetic topics. The final result is one of the most beautiful, moving and captivating moments in the last times. 

If the previous year Amarok was the revelation, with this disk the word consecration is so obvious that maybe until it diminishes the true value of the disk. The maturity and creative energy of Michal Wojtas transforms it into one of the most brilliant artists in the moment in the world, somebody to the one who to continue very sincerely from here from now on.

Andrés Valle