GUILLAUME PERRET & THE ELECTRIC EPIC

Guillaume Perret's debut album is really important event on French prog fusion scene. Professional sax player with strong jazz background, he collaborates on this album with Magma's veteran bassist Philippe Bussonnet. Other collaborator guitarist Jim Grandcamp played with Eric Serra and Jannick Top between others.

Music there on this album is not zeuhl, but very energetic and quite dark and heavy jazz fusion, but with pure jazz rock roots. Distorted bass in combination with fast and very complex drums builds quite zeulish, dark atmosphere, and guitar adds tension and nerve in very rocking manner. At the same time, sax is more free-jazzy, even avant sounding in moments.

There are no mellow tunes (happily) and relaxed romantic moments (I am so happy!) on this album at all. Mid- to fast tempo instrumentals, very precisely played, but far not too much polished, with tension and nerves, sharp sounds and complex improvs.Not very usual sound for French fusion, and possibly even more attractive because of that!

This is some really good modern fusion, although I admit I haven't heard a lot of post-70s fusion. This features bassist Philippe Bussonet who played with Magma. There is a little bit of a Zeuhl influence here, and not just because of the bass. The electric sax work of Guillaume Perret is great. Some of the songs here were recorded in concert judging by the crowd applause.

"Massacra" starts with crowd noises, but this is not a live song. The crowd is sampled from some rally or something. There are some good samples and effects which add to the song. At first this song sounds more metal than fusion. "Circe" builds up in the last half with some great Zeuhl-like scat singing. "Brutalum Voluptuous" is more of a traditional jazz song. Not very fusion-y but still good. I like the echoed sax here. "Louop" has a cool part with just sax and drums. The electric guitar sounds more like an electric piano in this song. Nifty electronic sounds near the end. The album ends with the shortest song, "Troglodyte Polyglotte Anthropomorphique". A jazz-funk-ish workout. The song fades out just as a guitar solo starts; I would have liked to hear the rest.

This is definately a grower, I like it the more I hear it. The musicianship is tight and the sound good. These guys show a lot of promise. I can see G.P. & E.E. making a 100% studio album better than this. I would give this a 3.5 but can't bring myself to give it 4 stars. My ratings are fairly conservative, so a 3 star rating from me means it's a good album and should be heard; just not something you should go out your way to have in your collection. Recommended to fans of modern fusion.