FRANK DERVIEUX - DIMENSION "M"

"Dimension M" was Franck Dervieux's only solo album, released in 1971. Franck was a keyboardist from Quebec playing in Jean-Pierre Ferland's band, playing a sort of pop/chanson style of music. You see pictures of Jean-Pierre usually holding his acoustic guitar, and this guy released his first album in 1959. A lot of ballads apparently. Sadly Franck came down with cancer during his stint with Jean-Pierre but got better, so he made this solo album with the help of six other musicians. These musicians decided to continue as a band calling themselves CONTRACTION after Franck got sick again, with the cancer eventually taking his life in 1975. He was in his early forties. So yes this record has connections to CONTRACTION but this is not a CONTRACTION record.

So yes a seven piece band with female vocalist Christiane Robichaud playing an important part with her wordless vocals and causing some reviewers to associate this with Canterbury. Not me. The violin is a really nice flavour on here, and it's electric. Franck on keyboards is the focus though, mostly piano and organ. He also produced and arranged all the music while composing most of this, he also got some help composing the final two tracks. We get a drummer who is very good plus a percussionist. The bass player is upfront and quite prominent throughout, often with the piano. Guitar is almost an after thought, it's just not standing out very often.

This is a very proggy album with lots of twists and turns, tempo changes and more. My top three include the opener, closer and the longest piece called "Concerto Pour Les Mondes Perdus" at almost 9 minutes. But I want to mention "Hyperboree Civilization" for that urgent rhythm section, I mean they are getting down to business here. Again this is all over the place, really enjoyable. The opener and title track eventually gets into an uptempo groove with those wordless vocals over top. I like that piano/percussion dual sometime after 2 minutes. It builds then kicks in around 5 minutes.

"Concerto Pour Les Mondes Perdus" opens with organ, bass and piano as wordless vocals join in. This is good. It all picks up before 2 minutes and I'm really enjoying this. Violin arrives. We get a couple of quiet sections before it kicks in with some energy, excellent drumming here. The closer "Present Du Futur" is an impressive instrumental display, the drumming once again comes to mind but lots of organ, piano and bass with some vocal melodies as well.

Without question this was an influential album in early seventies Quebec, inspiring a lot of musicians and bands. I've got 4 stars.

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