CD/DVD Releases: New Releases From Musea, January and February 2012
In their latest newsletter, French label Musea Records (and their imprints) announce the following titles now available (either Musea releases or distributed titles) starting with Sylvan - Sceneries. Here's a short bio on the band: With their debut album Deliverance in 1998, Sylvan opened the door to a hidden world. The music of this group from Hamburg takes you on a journey filled with miracles, dreams, love and passion. The album contains eight great songs, which will delight any listener with their rich, elegant atmosphere. Fantastic vocals, unforgettable melodies, dazzling guitar parts and cascades of notes of keyboards are there to prove that music contains a palette of sounds andconstantly changing emotions.
Up to standards rarely seen in the field of progressive rock, the powerful and expressive singing is not the least of the advantages of our friendly Teutons. Often compared to groups such as Marillion or IQ, Sylvan successfully adds a new facet to the jewel of the Nineties neo Progressive.
As for their little masterpiece, Encounters (2000), it sets the tone slightly while remaining melodic and affordable. The the album contains three splendid compositions that total more than 40 minutes! Hard to beat? Or ...
Artificial Paradise (2002) is the album that shows the band's maturity, placing stylistically qualitatively as well as at a Spock's Beard or IZZ level. A local comparison could also be made with RPWL, without anyone to find fault. Conclusion? Undoubtedly one of revelations of this year 2002! ...
Their album X-Rayed (2004) marks a significant change in the process of composition: if we find all the features that made the success of the German combo (vocals and powerful evocative, melodic guitar riffs and powerful rhythm section of concrete, enveloping keyboards, both choruses complex and easily assimilated ...), we notice the marked predominance of entirely new passages. The moods are more atmospheric, more introspective ... Also darker. It is no longer so remote a Radiohead or No-Man comparison! No doubt: Sylvan surprises us, let alone gets us excited!
Eleven years and six albums after its first publication, Sylvan became a name in the scene of great current Progressive rock. The seventh album Force Of Gravity (2009) extended the approach of Posthumous Silence and Preset, while making an electrical sound not so far removed from that Poles Riverside. The change of guitarist there is certainly no coincidence ... Note also that the singer Marco Glümann offers here probably his most poignant performance. In short, here is a must this year 2009. Do not miss!
[And from Sylvan's own press release:] With their eighth studio album Sceneries Sylvand - the well known progressive rock band from Hamburg, Germany - returns and delivers their longest most personal work ever. Two CDs cover the album which, conceptually oriented and divided into five chapters, deals with the ups and downs in life and the striving for bliss.
Being in the business for more then a decade Sylvan is one of the few German progressive rock bands that deals with international success. The tour led them to the US, Mexico and over half of Europe, and with Artificial Paradise (2002) or Posthumous Silence (2006) they created real prog rock classics.
Finally, on January 27th, 2012, Sceneries will be released and combines all the virtues which became the trademarks of Sylvan’s musics. Power, poetry and musical variety. The five guys from Hamburg love telling stories and do it as ever in an accurate unity of lyrics and music.
Although conceptually planned, Sceneries isn’t a conceptual album in classic definition. There‘s no continuous story told like on Posthumous Silence, it’s more a storyline including five individual episodes which all have in common the thematic priority: the search for those very things that make our life worth living.
In order to personalize this album the band decided to associate each chapter with one band member as a godfather for it, after nearly finishing the music. So the content and the final touch of each chapter was directed by one band member. Therewith Sceneries will be the most personal Sylvan album ever.
Sylvan 2012 are:
Marco Glühmann (voice)
Matthias Harder (drums)
Sebastian Harnack (bass)
Jan Petersen (guitars)
Volker Söhl (keyboards)
Sceneries also comes in a special edition -- a limited double CD in a premium Media-Book now ready to pre-order. This Media-Book comes is limited to 1,000 copies, only available through Sylvan's webshop.
What else is available from Musea?
Emmanuel Booz - : Emmanuel Booz released three essential albums in the mid-Seventies, a unique mix of revolutionary poetry, songs and Progressive rock. As an important character from the underground French scene, he was one of the first artists to write about ecology and about the impact of nuclear plants on Nature. These themes are today more accurate than ever. The famous French critic Philippe Manoeuvre even wrote that his singing was one of the first rap attempt! Le Jour Où Les Vaches... (1974), Clochard (1976) and Dans Quel Etat J'Erre (1978) are at last reissued, thanks to Musea. Each album includes biographical notes signed by Francis Grosse and some previously unreleased bonus tracks directly taken from Emmanuel Booz' private collection. A must-have!
Cartel Carnage - Incorporated: Although the roots of Cartel Carnage are in the metal realm, their music mixes, with no borders, free jazz, metal, pop and progressive rock to achieve a musical UFO. A avant-garde group, this project consists of musicians performing mainly in the jazz world. The energy of each is here to serve the common sound power and mutual music playing.
Imperial 4 - A Voir De Près: In a post-industrial-ethno-electric-urban vein, the young quartet delivers a first album with explorative compositions, particularly incisive, that immediately affects the audience. The use of the complete saxophone family, nourish the gills of a music whose hoarseness is matched only by the generosity and variety of the sounds developed within. The evident complicity of the saxophonists, the flexibility and dynamics of bass and drums serves a music full of surprises, made of melodic and rhythmic intricacy gathering trance, hip-hop, post-rock and jazz It's modern jazz, inventive and generous, passionate... It shows beautiful freshness. With this first album, a great future awaits this quartet.
Innermost - Adventis: A CD with haunting sounds that invite you to travel, to dream, the escape ... Innermost opens his creative universe as well to the rhythm "jazzy" (Poznan) on environments "world" (China, Enerji). By design artistic shows Innermost being a musician is not locked into one style gear, but to thrive by exploring various musical horizons. In short, Adventis, a range of sounds relevant, strongly colored mile and a touch surprising and innovative!
Laura Littardi - Inner Dance: Laura Littardi magnifies the art of storytelling distinctive of the soul-pop sensibility where words and notes ooze slowly like earnest tears on a cheek, conveying further sadness or smitten tenderness. With astonishing timing, she uses these folk harmonies openly, refusing the sophistication that would dress them in an excessive musical emotion. This is all refreshed by some of the timeless virtues of jazz: the sense of space, letting go without loss of control ("Proud Mary") and flights of improvisation. Let's just listen to her scatting with dazzling rhythmic mobility and cutting precision! Laura Littardi and her side players give us a music unboxed and label free, presented in catchy arrangements addressed by the singer, through an impressive orchestral cohesion fused into a singular, thrilling space with her, with brand new flavours, poignant and sensual rhythm, totally convincing. Inner Dance (Great Winds, 2012) strikes an impact because it's a musical act of faith that delivers and draws enchantingly on our entangled
intimacies. A poetic manifesto!
Rodolfo Mederos Generacion Cero - De Todas Maneras: Together with his band, Generacion Cero, Rodolfo Mederos released two LPs in the mid-seventies. This here is the second of the albums in question, and is widely considered to be one of the best and most successful combinations of Avant Tango and Progressive Rock in history. These recordings feature nice touches of Jazz, as well as clever incursions into Psychedelic territory. This is a purely Instrumental collection, which boasts Rodlfo's virtuous bandoneon playing and the outfit's beautiful and melanchollically atmospheric passages. Outstanding and legendary stuff!
Nagakanaya - L'1classable: Far from the banal, where stereotypes invade the everyday world, Nagakanaya (a musical muse, well known in Asia) came out of a meeting between Fabrice Vanagar, the multi-instrumental composer, and Cerenya, the songwriter. Their musical universe is an eclectic blend, drawn from rock, pop, blues, latino and vintage influences... The writing is based on human sensitivity. As for melodic side, it is like an organic firm, the instruments are not treated. It is on stage that the energy develops and penetrates the auditorium. Let all the joy and magic of this special sound enter you...
Pipeline - Pipeline: Pipeline transports and expels a raw material which sticks you in an abundance of jubilant basses. Double bass, bass, saxophone, drums, this atypical quartet proposes a contrasted music oscillating between melancholies and rebellions.
Rétroviseur - Rückspiegel: Invited by Ricardo Del Fra to perform at the IAJE 2008 in Toronto, Yann Joussein formed Rétroviseur. After a huge success they moved on to tour Europe and played in several prestigious venues and festivals including the famous "jazz à La Villette" and the Goethe Institute in Germany.
The jazz press including Jazzmagazine's renouned Frank Bergerot wrote numerous elogius articles and contributed to them winning the "Jazz Migration" program from "AFIJMA". Consequently they are programmed for 2010 to play in most of the Jazz clubs and festivals in France and Europe. All compositions are written by Yann Joussein and are a perfect melting pot of simplistic pop songs inter-twinned with intricate jazz improvisations and free jazz sonorities. The members of Rétroviseur have each played with many influential contemporary jazz musicians such as Jim Black, Marc Ducret, Archie Shepp, Riccardo Del Fra, Bernard Lubat, Evan Parker, Aka Moon, Barry Guy to name a few.
TEE - Trans-Europe Expression: TEE is a present Japanese band, made of five musicians on keyboards, flute, guitar, bass and drums. Jointly published on the Musea and Poseidon labels in the year 2009, The Earth Explorer featured instrumental music (with voices used as instruments) developed into six mid-long pieces, around 7 to 8 minutes. It's a lively, dynamic Progressive rock music, with numerous flute parts played by a virtuoso (Kenji Imai), and suggestive, dominating keyboards. Think of Seventies' Camel, Premiata Forneria Marconi or Vermilion Sands, and you'll have an idea of this beautiful, melodious pieces. TEE, like Kenso, also includes jazz-rock hints and rhythms. The Earth Explorer is played with enthusiasm, and succeeds in mixing the Seventies feeling and a modern production. The second opus Trans-Europe Expression (Musea, 2012) could have been a tribute to Kraftwerk, but the music featured here is
quite different. The recipe of the first album has been kept and bettered, an instrumental brand of Progressive jazz-rock fusion cooked with patience and talent. Let's just notice a new ingredient added for good measure on the track "Intersection": female voices, melodic to the bone. Here are six long pieces, to be tasted with pure enjoyment only!
Various - Decameron: Ten Days In 100 Novellas: After having revisited Dante's Divine Comedy ala Progressive rock, Finnish fanzine Colossus and French label Musea dig deeper into Italian literature of the Renaissance with another classic: Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. La Conscienza Di Zeno, Nexus, Lady Lake, Tommy Eriksson, La Theorie Des Cordes, Resistor, Faveravola, Index, Safara, Andrew Roussak Project, Penelli Di Vermeer, Los Jintes Negros, Posto Blocco 19, Servimontana, Fufluns, Senogul, Kate, Roz Vitalis, Rhys Marsh, Inner Drive, Trion, Attilio Perrone, Contrarian, The Samurai of Prog, Jukka Kulju, Ars Ephemera, Mogon, Ciccada, Ozone Player, Castle Canyon, La C.O.S.A., Cary Clouser, Daal and Marco Lo Muscio worked hard on that beautiful four-CD album, worth listening. Escape from the pest of today's mainstream music, and join the (musical) paradise on earth promied by Decameron!
And to close out this round up, Veterans Of The French Underground - Meet La Jeune-Garde: Veteran musicians from the "post-1968" movement, still in activity, and their relatively young "heirs" are gathered here for thirteen exclusive collaborations. Showing that continuity exists despite the changes of period and generation, and that passing the baton is possible and necessary. With Daevid Allen, Gilbert Artman, Pierre Bastien, Jac Berrocal, Philippe Bolliet, Guigou Chenevier, Pascal Comelade, eRikm, David Fenech, Lionel Fondeville, Dominique Grimaud, Etienne Jaumet, Kawaii, Klimperei, Cyril LeFebvre, Dominique Lentin, Madame Patate, Bérangère Maximin, My Favourite Sideburns Orchestra, Jean-François Pauvros, Richard Pinhas, Joseph Racaille, Dominique Répécaud, Christophe Sorro, Ghédalia Tazartès, Jo Thirion, Toupidek Limonade, Tycho Brahé.
[Source: Musea Records, Sylvan website]
