VISIONS

Clearlight fourth and last album, released in 1978, one year after the disappointing "Les contes du singe fou" shows a more new age direction, as the beautiful cover shows. Like the previous album, it's a half success, actually an unequal album. The opener "Spirale d'amour" features Verdeaux pastoral piano work, nice melody but really too gentle. It may evoke children cartoon music! You can virtually imagine a gentle pink rabbit appearing.We're very far from "Symphony" or "Forever blowing bubbles" acid cosmic spacerock. "Full moon raga" is the long ambitious piece which actually saves the album. It's a very good jazzrock tune which may evoke Mahavisnu at times. Only the drum lakes fineness, but we're already in 1978, so this explains that. "Au royaume des mutants" is an uncertain piece with a mainstream side due to the poor (french) vocals which are at least funny with lyrics such as, (translated): "The Mars hare smokes a joint, Alice is at the end of the path". No more English vocals anymore, like on previous album. "Paix profonde" is a nice meditative tune in a new age's vein featuring sitar, unfortunately too short.

To sum up, this last Clearlight effort is average, suffering from both its shortness and its inequality and eventually, only the more than 10 minutes "Fullmoon raga" piece makes the album worth. There's a cruel lack of cosmic guitar in the compositions, despite Christian Boulé presence. A certain indulgence can be taken in account considering that we're in 1978, not the most glorious era for progressive music! The nascent new age orientation prefigures Cyrille Verdeaux future solo works.