LAURELIE

Coming from the Ardennes plateau and its slopes towards the Meuse River, Laurelie is one of those rarely seen or talked-about group, even if its album is on demand and fetches a certain price. The group is made of the standard prog quartet with a flutist up front and released their sole album in early 70, but you can feel a few roots still anchored in the previous decade, but it gives the album a certain charm that is reminiscent of early Traffic albums.

The opening almost 9 minutes Sad Stone is a constantly evolving track that takes you through many different soundscape from both decades and the middle section features an excellent bass solo from Rapsaet, than a flute twiddle and a searing guitar shread before resuming the song. After a needless 60's garage anthem Remember Ronny, Laurelie explains Dracula's sexuality as foreplay before having drink (?) a Coke (Rapsaet's bass is acting up again), and the psych trip continues through Ugly Dirty Man and the Tower Of Illsion, with its overblown symphonic orchestration.

The flipside 's first few notes of Spider In Your Hair sound dark 70's rock, but past the intro, we're plunged in a late 60's track, but again the threshold is very thin. The rest of the album is for the 19-mins suite about their girlfriends. Opening on the organ-driven and piano- distorted Moody Blues-ian Deborah including an unidentified horn blower, then going on with the Traffic-inspired Fish, then the cheesy Days, Dreams, Hopes with the unneeded string orchestration, especially when a mellotron could've fixed that. Pink Clouds is a bluesy Syd Barrett meet McCartney song, while the Traffic meets Moodies eponymous track closes the album on an upbeat feel. While that "epic" is interesting (at best), it will not stand a chance against previous and future epic to come from the UK prog giants, just appearing amateur-ish.

The bassist Jean-Pierre Rapsaet would the only member to enjoy a lengthy music career, even if some other members would end in another group Sway that released a sole album in 79. There exist bad quality boots of this album, but the tracks increments are not respected and screw the track list and personnel list. Hardly essential, but for those wanting to find out how Psych became prog rock, here is a chapter that gives an answer. .