CHRONICLES

Portuguese act from Sintra, found in 1984 as a Symphonic Rock band, led by multi-instrumentalist Fred Lessing.As Progressive Rock reached a deadend at the time, almost all band members took their way into more commercial realms, while Lessing kept writing his beloved style.At the end of the 90's he produced two solo albums, ''Tales from earth'' (1998) and ''Orion'' (2000), with little contribution by a couple of guest musicians.In 2002 he released another self-produced album ,''Chronicles'', which lyrially was pretty much Lessing's autobiographical story.He receives help from a few friens on vocals, guitar and piano, the rest of the instruments as well as all lyrics were written by Lessing himself.

A poor man's PHIDEAUX?Maybe this is a good description for Fred Lessing's music with ''Chronicles'' being split in 21 short tracks, making up for a long musical journey in the life of this unknown artist.Vocally Lessing has made a very good work.All lyrical parts are nicely balanced between atmospheric narrations, dreamy female vocals as well as sensitive male ones, thus keeping a good balance in the section.Regarding his music, Lessing draws inspiration from both old-fashioned and modern Progressive Rock with notable PINK FLOYD, CAMEL and YES influences in his music, which sounds as a cross between PHIDEAUX, GUY MANNING and STEVE UNRUH.The album contains lots of warm acoustic parts mixed with background synths and expressive vocals in a Songwriter style, but these are followed by great electric textures with a bit of a ROINE STOLT guitar stylings, some more grandiose keyboard themes and generally a more rich musicianship.The storyteling lines also remind of MARILLION's ''Brave'', however this is mostly an amateur recording with its goods and bads, such as the mass of sampled instruments or the somewhat flat orchestral parts.

For a one man effort ''Chronicles'' qualifies as a quite good album.Symphonic, psychedelic and folky references are all over the place in an album highlighted by some very good guitar work.Recommended.