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Freestone is a band from the Netherlands and The Temple Of Humanityis a concept album about freemasonry. It is hard to describe the musical genre, but definitely this is progressive music. I wouldn’t go that far to say it’s progressive rock, because only few moments of this album are in the rock direction. But with a description like pop or soft rock the strong progressive music factor comes too short.
Main man behind Freestone and composer, producer, guitarist, bassist, keyboarder is Harm Timmerman. Next comes singer Diederik Huisman, who has a clean and strong voice. In some moments it reminds me of the softer songs of Depeche Mode (!) with Martin Gore´s vocals like in the title track. This only underlines that there are also pop music influences in Freestone´s music.
Further important for the sound of Freestone is Alex Simu, who plays saxophone and flutes. Especially the saxophone adds something to the music that reminds me constantly of such masterpieces like Pink Floyds “Us & Them” from “The Dark Side Of The Moon”. The clean picked guitar sometimes reminds me of Steve Rothery of Marillion. Then there are also piano and cello, which drives the sound more into the classical or jazz direction. On ‘Documentum Intellige’ there is also a real choir, sounding like a chant in a church. Though there is only one faster song with the hit-like ‘Children Of The Widow’ all the other soft and laid back tones are beautiful and very friendly to the ear.
Whoever likes the softer moments of Pink Floyd and David Gilmour, whoever likes progressive music with saxophone and flutes that doesn´t rock you but magically captures you for fifty minutes has to check this band. I bet you will not regret it. More info and details you can get via www.free-stone.org.
One thing more: the album comes in a digipak with a booklet and very good artwork. So check it out!