PHIDEAUX XAVIER: FRICTION

The debut album from Phideaux is really some of the worst prog rock I have ever heard in my life. I have many ugly words in my vocabulary that I would like to say, but out of respect for the ones who like this album, I will try and keep this review clinical.

The music on this album, can be described as soft prog rock with almost no surprises. It´s very boring and way way too long. My God there are 20 songs on the album. It´s been quite a challenge to get through. It´s way too soft and trivial for me. The singer Phideaux Xavier has a good voice though and I know that Phideaux will get better later as I have just listened to their new album Doomsday Afternoon which I think is really good.

The sound quality is also something that drags this album down. It´s not very clear. I also have a big problem with the female background singing which is just dreadful. But the worst part is the song Inspecting the Spoils which is some kind of ballad. It´s so cheesy that I had to swallow a couple of times to be sure my supper didn´t come up again. The organ sound is very much like the one used in christian churches or on Mariah Carrey or Whitney Houston albums. This is really horrible and even though this is prog rock I can´t understand who would want to listen to this album.

The lyrics are for the most part stupid childish rhymes about nothing, and when they are not of this sort, I think I hear some christian leanings. This is where I say stop. I can live with christian lyrics if the music is exciting, but when it´s like this, the lyrics just helps to drag the album from 2 small stars to 1. This is not recommendable, but after all it is a debut and as I said before I know Phideaux will get better with time.

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.