PROJECT 2K9: WORLD CLASS

This latest venture by US composer, author and keyboardist Lisa LaRue is a rather underwhelming feature as far as my personal perceptions go, especially considering some of the musicians involved in this production.

The songs are generally well performed, and apart from the drums that doesn't really add much to the proceedings the instrumentation is adequate. Mix and production isn't the best, but it's the compositions themselves that at least for me fails to deliver. Gentle, atmospheric and rather straight forward affairs, with one foot in the lighter side of symphonic art rock and the other in AOR territories these tunes generally come across as a bit too nice and pleasant to manage to intrigue. Pleasant and predictable yielding few surprises. The more strictly AOR based songs, Tell Me Why and final track Save Me, comes across as the weakest efforts overall, representing a style and sound extensively explored by others for more than 30 years and staying put to the most generic parts of this genre throughout.

Lisa LaRue is a fine instrumentalist though, and with better compositions at hand next time around I sure hope her next endeavour will be a pleasing rather than merely a pleasant affair.

Lisa is a keyboard player who has been influenced by progressive rock since a young age, and this was her fourth album, released in 2009, although she did call it a project which then led to the forming of her band Project 2KX. When I noticed that John Payne (Asia) was one of those involved I became very interested indeed, but the more I played this album the more disillusioned I became. There is a real lack of focus over the course of the album which leads to it seeming very disjointed indeed, and actually quite hard to follow. There are some really good progressive instrumental numbers where Lisa often finds herself in the supporting role to the very fine guitarwork of Steve Adams, but then these are broken up with some AOR songs and the result is that the sum of the parts is very much less tan it should be.

If Lisa had concentrated on just an AOR album, or just an instrumental progressive rock album, then I am sure that either would have been more preferable than the end result. Well produced with some fine songs and performances, it isn't something to which I will often be returning. More details at www.lisalaruemusic.com