Vietgrove's music comfortably fulfills the listener's expectations after having soaked in the visual ambience of the grainy, color-tinted image on the front cover, along with the olde font and spelling describing the proceedings on the back. The band's mainstay is Norman Phay (synths/guitar/bass/programming), who's produced six cassettes/albums under the Vietgrove banner since 1986. They are currently an English duo with Mark Bailey adding guitar/bass/programming, creating a generally pastoral soundscape that is positively drenched in atmosphere. Using a wide variety of guitars, keyboards, and studio multi-tracking, The Little Apocrypha is a musically ambient journey with sonic views of early Oldfieldian landscapes dotted with groves of early Genesis, Wappassou, and Clearlight. They alternately use guitars and keyboards as lead voices while using both as textural backdrops of varying thickness, all the while managing to evoke imagery of peaceful yet dark, earlier times.
Vietgrove's music frequently straddles the border between ambient and lyrical. Their use of mellotron and other fat analog keyboard sounds along with clear, forward guitar leads is inviting to more musically-oriented listeners of prog, while their heavy textures and spatial voyages will beckon ambient listeners. As such, they've managed to produce a disc that should have fairly broad appeal. In addition to the disc's eight main tracks are extras that bring the total playing time to nearly 80 minutes. -- Mac Beaulieu