MY HABIT

With songs written and performed by this virtually unknown musician, The COENOBITE delivers a highly captivating album full of surprises and charm. "My Habit" is a concept based album with a wide range of mood and tempo changes throughout. The opening track clocks in around 30 minutes and is made up of some 6 distinct parts. The COENOBITE plays a highly dark symphonic style of music which also contains some nice electric guitar parts. The COENOBITE is credited with playing most of the keyboards, guitar and drums. Sound effects are used throughout to add to the macabre feeling The COENOBITE is trying to evoke throughout this album. A good listen.

When I worked for the Dutch progrock paper SI Magazine I got in touch with Coen Vrouwenfelder, the man behind Dr. Coenebite. We both wrote for SI Magazine and played guitar. He invited me at his home and I was impressed by his very enthousiastic attitude and great musical ideas. This debut-CD (on his own label) is a pleasant blend of classical and symphonic, I'm delighted with the nice words from PA veteran James Unger! To me Dr. Coenebite was the Dutch Gandalf, unfortunately things didn't work out and he disappeared from the scene. Last month (almost 10 years after our last contact!) I got an e-mail from him and he sent me some very promising tapes. I hope to inform you about these tapes very soon, this multi-instrumentalist has so many skills and great ideas!

The Coenobite is the moniker chosen by Dutch multi-instrumentalist Coen Vrouwenvelder in early-90's, free translated from Greek into ''common life'', under which he produced a couple of albums.His first work back in 1988 was the demo ''Turn the page'', a low budget production recorded with a 4-track recorder and a very cheap equipment.This was followed by the full-legth CD release ''The habit'', featuring Coen at the front cover dressed as monk and shot in his home's garden.

It was a self-financed production with Coen helped only on guitar solos and voices by Joost Cornelissen and Nynke Kooistra, suffering from the awful drum programming and the average- sounding keyboards, but also containing some good electric guitar work.Actually ''The habit'' sounds a lot like the early efforts of ELEGANT SIMPLICITY, the one-man project of Steve McCabe.Melodic, mostly instrumental, Progressive Rock characterized by the good electric solos, the dreamy keyboard work, sometimes close to New Age soundscapes and the repetitive grooves.The guitar of Mr. Vrouwenvelder is the shining instrument in here, covering parts filled with melodic solos, dramatic chops and groovy leads, while his keyboard work also contains some nice ideas, especially on the grandiose symphonic passages and the few harsichord notes.However the recording sounds somewhat amateur, the drum machine is really unbearable, while the album has tons from similarities from track to track, all based on the same dramatic atmosphere.

Dedicated fans of acts like ELEGANT SIMPLICITY, COLIN MASSON, MIKE OLDFIELD or modern CAMEL but with a poorer sound are those having some possibilities to dive deep into this album.Decent effort by a single person, but not good enough to categorized as recommended...2.5 stars.