Progressive Rock
Seacrest Oy · 30 January 2026
Of the sixty-four minutes of “Not Normal After Music”, eighteen and a half are a single track: “Plowman of the Sky”, the fourth, which is where the record makes up its mind. Alessandro Di Benedetti’s voice alternates with Paula Pörsti’s, the instrumental combinations keep shifting the angle, and the piece moves from pastoral reflection to full grandeur without doing it all at once. It came out on 30 January on Seacrest Oy, Kimmo Pörsti’s Finnish label; he plays the drums and produces.
Rafael Pacha plays guitars, low whistle, keyboards, zither, recorders, percussion, electric violin, viola da gamba and bass. His ground until now has been the crossing of Celtic folk with progressive rock, in the orbit of The Samurai of Prog and The Guildmaster; the door he opens here is fusion, and not every room behind it is worth walking into. When Risto Salmi’s saxophone takes on the agreeable tone of smooth jazz it leaves passages that wouldn’t be out of place in a hotel lobby, and the Latin jazz excursions — “El Diablo Cuando Se Aburre…”, five minutes twenty — are the least convincing thing on it.
What does hold up is what was already there. “Wonder If I’ll Be”, seven minutes seven, and the “Plowman” carry the best guitar solos on the record and the flutes that reconnect it with the folk side, and Michael Manring brings his Zon Hyperbass. Which means the rest of the album (seven pieces, all between four and six and a half minutes) lives below those two, and having the ninth and final track be an alternative version of “Joy”, already present at number three, doesn’t help disguise it.
Rating: 6.5/10
Text by Guillem Cardós