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Dan Ar Braz - Musique pour les silences à venir CD (album) cover

MUSIQUE POUR LES SILENCES À VENIR

Dan Ar Braz

Prog Folk


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kenethlevine
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Prog-Folk Team
2 stars By the mid 1980s there wasn't much enthusiasm for either Celtic or progressive music in the mainstream. But so called "new age" instrumental music was being lapped up by baby boomers who didn't want anything too challenging to upset their ostensibly laid back comfortable lifestyle. Most of the more popular music in this genre sought first and foremost to be inoffensive, which is perhaps the biggest sin. The best of the style could be found in artists who tried to extract the essence of their own roots into a palatable stew, such as the delightful Nightnoise.

Dan Ar Braz luckily did not stick around too long as a new age artiste, because he fell into most of its trappings when he did. This is a bit too much like Will Ackerman, a talented guitarist who founded the quintessential new age label, Windam Hill records, and underachieved artistically. It sounds good but is mostly so much empty air, especially with the insipid synthesizers of "Thème pour Suzan", and in the two cuts that bracket the disk.

Ar Braz' advantage is that he is equally comfortable electrically and acoustically, and his lead guitar style can be like a bagpipe in all the best ways, as a lament without the whine, as in the Camel-lite "La Fille du Chemin Bleu", "Les Lamentations de la mer", and "La Véranda des jours sans Soleil", which seems like a dress rehearsal for the "Lecture de Conrad" theme from the "Reve de Siam" soundtrack.

In spite of its beautiful title, meditative quality, and Ar Braz' talent and feeling, "Music for the Silences to Come", is a 2.5 star effort, rounded down since it is unlikely to be of much interest here. For diehard fans and new age acolytes.

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Posted Monday, November 3, 2008 | Review Permalink

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