Member:
BrianG
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by BrianG)
Date:
10/24/2006
Format:
CD (Album)
Stephane Desbiens is an experienced French - Canadian session musician who has a string of fine solo and group project releases. He is co-founder of the folk/prog band Sense and before that contributed to the bands Rose Nocture, Ère G, Red Sand, Mélia and Jack Lavoie. In this latest project, he uses the full range of modern guitar manipulation, short of Frippertronics, to create powerful, melodic compositions. Tracks swell and subside within a fixed range of tolerance for ear abuse. Traces of bands like RPWL, and Karmakanic and other heavy guitar albums abound. Similar sounds might come from albums like Spocks Beard's Feel Euphoria and OSI's Free. Vocals are strong and decisive in accented English. Mention should be made of guest musicians Martin Orford from IQ, Fred Schendel from Glass Hammer and especially Tomas Bodin of the Flower Kings who seemed to influence the project significantly with his keyboard solos. Jazzy keyboard solos, precise drumming and tasteful occasional metal edges are the albums technical highlights.
The album also shows a characteristically French-Canadian sense of balancing male / female, yin / yang - complimentary opposites within the same song. A soft acoustic passage leads to a hard-edged guitar crunch fading to an ambient landscape. Desbiens uses time signatures, instrumentation and some tasty electronica to achieve this balance. In "End of Recess", an uncredited female chorus fades to a tender acoustic guitar and mellotron refrain, then bursts out again in keyboard wails. However, sometimes the transition seems too fast, reflecting a need for what Wakeman did for Yes - someone to stitch the ideas together. And Desbiens needs to know when a song has come to an end. "September Solitudes" is about five minutes too long. After everything that needs to be said has been said, it’s time to reprise and end.
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