THE BURSTING

The only known Prog band from Monaco was found in 1981 by its leader Marc Ceccotti.Ceccotti was previously involved in several local bands, after having studied at the Monaco Academy of Music.He set up the band along with classmate Jean-Louis Suzzoni on guitars and Noel Damon on keyboards and percussion.The same year the Monegasques recorded the demo ''The bursting'' along with guest musicians Jacky Rosati, Philippe Peratonnere (both on keyboards) and Sandrine Brisson on violin.It became commercially available several years later, when the band kept solding it as a CD-R via its website.

Being original is a good thing, but it can also lead to stylistical confusions and that was the case with Edhels' early recordings.The band produced six pieces of synth-drenched soundscapes with a deep guitar background, which shifted between acoustic and electric parts, but inexperience and lack of professional equipment led to below average material.Extremely poor programmed drums (propably coming out of some sort of Casio technology) and thin electronic movements resulted a flat, cold sound with limited emotional content and total lack of coherence between one piece's variations.Propably they attempted to go for a combination of Electronic Music with symphonic overtones and guitar-based Instrumental Rock with occasional dark perceptions, created through the sinister, muddy and laid-back guitar solos and a dramatic approach on keyboards, but the weak sound quality left much to be desired.The short ''L'Etrange quete'' sounds a bit more consistent with Fusion-like guitar solos over eerie synthesizers and developing sound effects, quite similar to TIEMKO, while the following ''Edhels (symphonie no.1)'' and ''Maleak (symphonie no.2)'' contain hints of old GENESIS and intense keyboards ala ALPHA III, even flirting with Neo Prog but with a more sterile approach and pronounced electronic sounds and effects, the quality of the recordings though is below the acceptable levels.

Propably Edhels were too young to offer such serious musical experiments.Dark yet smooth Electronic-Fusion with some decent moves, but overall very incosistent and pale.For fans of the band or maybe TIEMKO and similar groups.

Oh now I understand at last why after their magnum opus, Still Dream, they released their abstract Astro Logical and their ridiculous Universal! They did not go bad, not at all. They just partially returned to their roots. Perhaps it would be wrong to consider The Bursting an instant instrumental prog album like other products by Edhels (except Angel's Promise). What the music really is, may be best described by the Russian word 'naigrysh'. It's very difficult to translate it into English. Dictionaries provide 'folk tune' as the English for 'naigrysh', but in fact it's not necessarily folk and not necessarily a tune (i.e. motif, theme etc). It may be just a spontaneous strumming with no obvious musical structure. Edhel's debut album is in fact one giant electronic prog naigrysh. Sometimes luxuriously negligent, sometimes impudently negligent, occasionally absurd, occasionally innovative, mostly charming. Unfortunately the album's duration is (at least in my personal terms...) excessive, this music hardly earns 53 minutes of a listener's time, it would be better 35-40 minutes long, a good half of the tracks could be shortened with no content loss. But I'd say it would be unserious and irresponsible to consider The Bursting a weak album. It's far from being perfectly done, but more than interesting by design. The musical ideas are rich and very promising. Yes the young, inexperienced and poorly equipped band could not work them out and perform quite well what they conceived. But if someone asks me 'do you want to have this on vinyl?', I would say yes. At least to me, this album would be an excellent addition (sic!) to my collection. Thus, four stars.