SKIES ARE ILLUSIONISTS is the stage name of marvelous gifted young Pennsylvanian man Cris Kailer, who wrote this entire two part instrumental EP saga called "Replicating The Sun" and played all the instruments on it completely on his own, that alone is admirable. You can spot a lot of compositional talent in this debut piece by Kailer.

As an instrumental, it's usually quite easy falling into the pit of banal or boring riffs / solos, as a one man band instrumental, the danger is usually even more imminent, but here I noticed that this guy wishes to speak through his music and tell a story, he wasn't repeating himself at any point, the melody and rhythm is ever evolving and keeps taking new paths, therefore I'd say you actually need to participate with active listening to enjoy this piece. Progressive Rock influences are very apparent: polyrhythmic patterns at times, many of them reminded me of the later KING CRIMSON sound, similar to their album "Discipline", the repetitive guitar riff while a second guitar plays over it with a different time signature. Another Prog element was the impressive melodic bass lines that added a lot of spice into the guitar solos. Heavier riffs reminded me at times of the complexity usually familiar as the signature sound of BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME.

What really saddened me while listening to this piece was the in cohesiveness of the mix and at parts, clutter of the arrangement itself. I'm pretty sure that if some parts of this piece were arranged recorded and mixed differently, it could already be a wonderful and genius debut for SKIES ARE ILLUSIONISTS. The thickness and layering of some parts of the arrangement requires much more clarity in the mix than there is at the moment, the heavier and more complex parts played with a combination of different distorted guitars over each other sounded blurred and very hard to follow.

I really hope that in future releases these issues will be dealt with more attention and can allow the listener to enjoy these wonderful musical ideas. The whole album shows enormous potential but falls a bit short at the moment for being yet too raw. Would love to hear what comes next.