LES CONTES DU SINGE FOU

The name of the album is Les Contes du Singe Fou but all lyrics are sung in english. Maybe little despair for commercialism? Who knows. Anyways Clearlight is in my mind the best french-progressive band ever. While not alienating listeners with avant-garded obscurities theres still a fine progressive and true symphonic approach to music. Les Contes du Singe Fou is a science-fiction concept-album released in 1975 and it consists out of five numbers from which numbers 1 and 3 are divided into multiple parts. The first piece of music is "The Key" which is divided into 1)The Outsider which is an excellent build up with fine vocals. The Outsider flows nicely into part two: A Trip to the Orient. The last part is Lightsleeper's Despair which brings to mind A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers by Van Der Graaf Generator, especially the vocals are a little similar to Peter Hammills. After "The Key" comes Soliloque, a beatiful song which doesnt quite answer the hopes, The Key builded up before. Then there is a cosmic baroque inspired 1:50 long Prelude right in the middle of the album. The Prelude starts a three-part song called "Time Skater". Part two of Time Skater is called Count Down To Eternity. It has a melody that resembles far too much the flute-theme in Genesis's Suppers Ready but otherwise it's definetly musically the best part of the album. Cosmic Crusaders ends "Time Skater". It's an acoustic piano rollercoaster, a bit too stretched in length but still worthwhile to listen to. The album ends with two excellent pieces of music. Stargazer which again has vocals and then the worthy ender for the album Return to the Source, an excellent build-up song with all the instruments that were played through the album. You can hear that Clearlight put very much effort into making this album, but still something isn't right. Some pieces are a bit stretched in length and some pieces borrow ideas from other albums. The originality isn't the same as in Clearlight's first albums. Still this is a fine album.

3.9 stars