PHIDEAUX XAVIER: FRICTION

"Friction" is the debut full-length studio album by US progressive rock artist Phideaux Xavier. the album was released through Bloodfish Music in 1992. Xavier later went on have a relatively successful career in progressive rock/art rock working purely under the Phideaux monicker, and although "Friction" may once upon a time have been considered Phideaux´s debut album, Xavier today considers the album a demo and often doesn´t mention it at all on his official sites.

"Friction" is a concept release with lyrics centered around the elements of Air, Fire, Water and Earth. There are both elements from progressive rock, folk rock, art rock, and even 80s UK electronic pop on the album. The individual songs (which there are over 20 of on the album) are organised in four parts. Xavier is often complimented by a female vocalist and the vocal part of the album is decent but not great. The material is relatively well composed, but that´s about it for the positives, because both the instrumental performances and especially the sound production are below par for the genre. So I fully understand that Xavier sees "Friction" as a demo rather than an album which is part of his Phideaux discography.

You can hear promise now and again, but listening through almost 80 minutes of bad sound quality art rock/progressive rock which isn´t even that well performed is honestly a bit of a chore. I´ll give points for creativity and the will to finish this recording and a 2 star (40%) rating isn´t all wrong.

This is quite a friction for a debut album. The kind that would leave you speechless.

Of course, this album didn't get a whole a lot of distribution and should be consider more as a demo. A twenty or so combo songs of little interest. The man being alone to play the instruments, and his vocal parts are hardly famous to get something great out of here.

Poor (to no) melody. Weak vocals, dull music overall. The guy plays it all, and he is not an Oldfield genius to say the least. This is a "secret" well kept. And it is better so. Even if the man will rebound (much) later on.

On top of this, it is an overlong work which can only add to the boring mood. There is hardly one single good song to catch here. Some electro sounds from "Lights Camera Friction" are somewhat John Foxx oriented, but the essential flavour of the man (Foxx, I mean) is non-existing of course.

There are some ridiculously short songs like "Ashes" (just over thirty seconds) which are a true nonsense, but combined with the next "The Life", they sound as making a whole. Or a hole.Poor, indeed. This album is best to be avoided.

There are lots of painful moments like "Aquamarine" and its religious flavour, "Living (On The Petals") etc. It is really hard to go through this work from the opener to the last track. It is full of dull stuff (of which "All Seeing Eye" is just an example).

As a summary, I would say that this almost eighty (!) minutes effort isn't worth a ? cent. True boring music ("Claw The Land") isn't really what you would like to hear. But that's all that you will get here. Needless to say that the rating is the lowest I can think of.

I bought this album with a bit of trepidation. I have recently become quite a fan of Phideaux, and being aware that this album was out of print, I figured that if I wanted to hear where it all began, now was my chance. But all reviews here indicated that this music would not impress, and even on Phideaux's MySpace, he advised that the music here must be taken with a grain of salt.

The music here is not without merit, but it does not have any of the cohesiveness or smoothness of Phideaux's later works. This is a shame, because it does feature a lot of what has made Phideaux great; the vocals, the melodic sense, the contrast and the atmosphere. But, although this song rarely strays past the five minute mark, it feels as if it lasts just a bit too long. There are many good ideas, but each of them would feature maybe thirty seconds in Phideaux's modern works, instead of the 3-5 minutes they are given here.

This isn't a problem the first time through, where this album is intriguing; with 22 songs, one is assured that there must be something of value here, and there are enough moments on this album that stand out to give it the sense of having promise. But upon further listens, there are no further discoveries, no depth uncovered, and those few moments that made the album sound like it might be a grower on the first time through grow tiring on multiple play throughs.

Worth hearing once or twice if you are already a fan of this bands music and need to hear it all; otherwise, this very early work should be treated exactly as Phideaux himself warns: as a demo.