After almost one decade nothing has changed on their stylistic orientation. Still pianos, classical instruments and spherical-floating female singing determine the sonic picture. The music is – on a wondrous way – floating and warmly pulsing, once clothed in gloomy colours, once bathing in rays of light. STOA doesn’t commit the failure of limiting themselves to one special mood, instead they skilfully vary and give different emotions much more scope. Even the alleged classification with the black scene will not work. Because they utterly don’t stick to the typical clichés and just do beautiful music, where the paraphrase “sonic landscapes“ is close to. Not only sad and dark but also melodic, deeply moving and beyond positioned categories.

Zal is opened with the piano only intonated I Held The Moon, followed by Alone, which creates with its sparkling piano tunes and restrained wind section entries a phantasmagoric mood. At all STOA doesn’t set on bombastic, mounting up soundscapes but gives the single tunes and melodies scope for development. The afterwards following I Wish You Could Smile comes out from the pen of Sam Rosenthal (e.g. Black Tape For A Blue Girl) and shows clearly how deep both formations are connected to each other in the musical way...
In the further course it follows the very dark Chanson d’Automne and the Ariels Song, which builds up a landscape for your inner eye and the gentle rapture radiating Puisque Tout Passe can set another accents, whereas the latter one is also the wonderful finale of this CD.

The lyrics are elegantly selected from the works, among others, of Shakespeare, Blake, Rilke or Joyce and fit excellently with the presented music. In fact I can’t completely comprehend what the album title means ( maybe an old Persian deity?) but that is not really a reason not to listen to this marvellous masterpiece several times. Those who don’t definitely will miss something precious! And I lend my hope expression, that we don’t have to wait for the fourth album that long of a time again ...

Stoa