Morgaine

User tags: elp kingcrimson epic soundscape

This album is remarkably easy to describe by analogy: King Crimson meets up with ELP in classic Genesis concept-album territory. :-)

Marching confidently down the road created by such classic masters of early progressive rock, Conceptual Experimentations (1998) is quite a masterpiece in that genre, its tracks being epic compositions that give the middle finger to today's 3-minute track rule and media-induced Attention Deficit Disorder. Four of Sébastien Gramond's five tracks range from 13 to over 18 minutes in length, and they fill their lengths with interesting variation, not repetition.

The compositions are pretty amazing (unless you have ADD :P).

Track 1 "Happy To Be" gives the Crimson + ELP sound free reign, and is highly satisfying in that mold. It's an intense soundscape of the kind that Crimson delivered on Deja VROOOM, and evolves a lot while exploring its music territory. Vocals makes an appearance halfway through for a few bars, and descend into "vocal sound effects" for a short while, but don't take a lead.

Track 2 "Neuralgia" explores broader ground, evolving the earlier progressive rock into the jazz fusion area -- this wouldn't sound out of place in a Chick Corea or Weather Report album. It's a very well designed creative piece.

I'm not sure what track 3 "So Easy" is doing on the album. At under 3 minutes long and not having anything in common with the rest of the album, but being some sort of light pop song with poor vocals and nothing interesting in its instrumentation, I'm going to ignore it in my rating, else it would have a very negative effect.

Track 4 "Hither And Thither" gets King Crimson and ELP back in gear, but hitches in some classic Genesis too, back from the days when they wrote intricate concept albums rather than pop songs. Even Yes puts in a presence, although that could be because of the occasional similarity between Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman on keyboards. It gets a fusion jazz feel towards the end from the use of what sounds like a fretless bass as a lead instrument.

Track 5 "Austral Winds" has a different sound using a lead keyboard voice that could be described as "tympanic guitar", but no less classic and highly effective. A strong composition that combines keyboard and rock guitar very effectively, halfway through it hints at Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway before evolving into a tympanic frenzy and then slowing down for a curious Floyd-meets-ELP finish.

In a word: FANTASTIC!

Thank goodness that someone is still producing symphonic compositions in progressive rock, amid the musical desolation of the 3-minute era. Well done Sébastien Gramond.

The musicians and vocalist simply aren't on the same page in this album.

Which is a pity, because the musicians were trying to do an interesting and fairly original job. Without the "help" of the vocalist, this album could have earned quite a high score.

User tags: trashvocals eartorture hiphopfailed nonsense

User tags: fusion spanishguitar rockguitar moorish thematic storytelling historic rockbuildup onetrackwonder appliestrack1

I was immediately captivated by the Spanish guitar intro in Cortez & Pizarro. Then the powerful rock guitar kicked in and I said to myself "Oh, this is something special, a great fusion". And indeed it was, an unusual and interesting number that exhuded individuality, full of rock buildup and power yet launching proudly off a rich platform of moorish influence. Absolutely wonderful.

So I listened to the rest of the album too, but alas what was promised in the first track did not materialize again, except for a few seconds of gypsy violin. A quiet pop album, going absolutely nowhere. I had been promised far more by track #1, but the promise was empty.

Summary: Excellent starting track, but I'm afraid the rest did nothing for me. Some of the rest rivalled the emptiest pop you can get.

I echo DoozerD's comment: Be bolder. The world doesn't need more light cruising pop, and you won't be remembered for it. Clearly you have the potential to do something more ambitious.

I don't really know how to rate this album, because for me Cortez & Pizarro rates an 8 or 9 easily, while the rest of the tracks barely rate 1-3 from me. I've decided not to let album averaging rule me though, and it's better to be generous anyway, so I'm rating the first track alone and pretending that the rest of the album doesn't exist. If I don't do this then the magnificence of track #1 will be lost.

Well done Slim, great track. Be bolder.

User tags: pop funrock lightrock cockosreaper opensource

Brad Sucks has his own style and unique sound, and carries it off to perfection. That was true for the first album, and is just as true for this new one. Great stuff.

While this music isn't in one of my preferred genres (I tend to look for darker, more pain-ridden music), I found myself playing both Brad Sucks albums repeatedly out of pure nostalgia. The reason is that the track "Making Me Nervous" from the first album is the default demo track included in the Cockos Reaper music production environment, so I heard it a zillion times while playing around with that software for a while. That left a lasting impression. :-)

While I may not be the target audience, I want to give Brad a big thumbs up for doing what he does so well, and for being a standard bearer for free and open-source music (sources on his site). The Brad Sucks sound is just unmistakeable. Good work. :-)

User tags: nonformula listenersalbum soundscape caravan kingcrimson diverse vastcanvas topquality

This is a VERY interesting album, in the fullest meaning of "interesting": WhiteRoom's musical canvas is huge, and covers a vast amount of genre and cultural territory in very original and diverse ways. These musicians enjoy throwing formula out of the window.

It's going to take a while for this album to sink in fully, as the tracks don't occupy adjacent points on a single musical landscape. And that's excellent. This is a complex, thinking person's album, and its production values are high.

I too felt some King Crimson colour in there as others have mentioned, and even some Caravan from way back. I love the occasional latin underpinnings (although perhaps not the Spanish rendition which seemed a little strained to my ears), and the classic latin rhythms are as appealing as always yet don't turn this into a latin album at all. Some simple pop forms appear every now and then, but only to make the music more easily approachable and never to the detriment of the whole. It's an amazing production, complex both musically and artistically, and as original as hell. It even contains some classical Chinese instrumentation. Wow, just wow.

Not everything appeals immediately because the landscape is so vast and possibly broader than one's main tastes, but it's worth persevering and listening keenly, because you soon find that every element fits perfectly into this great work.

This is a really fine listeners' album, in all respects, for those who listen outside the box.

Well done, WhiteRoom. VERY well done. :-)