ODYSSÉES

XII Alfonso is a French symphonic prog/neo classic music ensemble with some albums on their conscience. They are known as a acoustic symphonic prog band. Which is a pretty accurate description on this album too. Long semi-acoustic based pieces based on their local folk music tradition with a wide variety of instruments. The list of contributing musicians is very long. I am at a loss to explain what the instrument "musical glasses" is and how it sounds like.

I am all for long symphonic pieces of music. But I also want a bit of variations too. There is not much variations on this album. There is not much happening here too and not much variations. That besides of some electric guitars and some electronic voice samples + the sporadic female vocals. The whole album seems very over ambitious and disjointed. It feels like the band has bitten over more than they can swallow. The album is in short far too ambient and too little symphonic for my liking. The quality I expect from an album like this is simply not present. It is a pity, because I think the band is onto something. But they ambitions is far bigger than the abilities on this album. A stricter quality control is sadly lacking on this album. Hence my lack of enthusiasm. Two points for the effort and some pieces of music here.

2 stars

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