Noekk
The Watersprite

Noekk is a project born from the work of two little-known German musicians, coming from the Teutonic folk scene: the two present themselves under the pseudonyms Funghus Baldachin, keyboards and vocals, and F. F. Yugoth, drums and bass, with the guitar parts shared.

The band seems to have the intention, with this first album (2005), of giving a great demonstration of eclecticism and at the same time paying homage to historic prog-rock bands of the past, such as King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator.

The result is certainly interesting and varied, although doubts remain about suppressing boredom at times, from those listeners generally resistant to profuse experimentalism. As already mentioned, the album mixes parts of progressive rock with more or less rough rhythms with parts featuring dark, folk, and even doom elements, for certain cadences.

The listening experience presents, to a very attentive ear, a dominating descending then ascending climax: the debut track, alias title-track “The Watersprite,” is indeed what presents itself as the most truly prog-metal and heaviest (so to speak); as it progresses, the atmosphere becomes more subdued and introspective before exploding again into a rock-laden riff in the closing track “The Riddle Seeker.”
The focus of the album is surely the Dead Can Dance cover “How Fortunate Is The Man With None,” which represents the culminating moment of the introspective journey and a song with purely dark reminiscences. Here the reinterpretation bows to the legacy of Peter Hamill, historic leader of Van Der Graaf, and his redundant and rhetorical vocal tone seems to live again in Baldachin at times. Besides the cover, the most valid songs from my point of view are “Strange Mountain,” which for the great crescendo of intensity reminds one of some tracks from Pawn Hearts by Van Der Graaf, and “The Fiery Flower,” even if only for the velvety intro performed with the flute.

This is an album clearly devoid of commercial pretenses and aimed especially at an audience floating on the progressive folk airs of the great seventies groups, while paying attention, however, to the enhancing presence of classic metal and rock streaks.