INVISIBLE MOON

Third stage of the Invisible series, Invisible Moon boasts the now-usual quartet plus the now-usual friends guesting on different tracks. As you might guess, this album is a bit the answer to their Invisible Sun album. This album (their twelfth if I'm not mistaken, and still on Guy Seghers' label Carbon 7) is one of their better one in recent years and comes with one of their more interesting packages with an intriguing booklet. It is made of three recording sessions (on Cassol's initiative, ranging from 97 to 2000 and mixed two years later. Indeed the groups had taken a bit too much of India's culture as most of their newer albums were indulging a bit too systematically in that realm. Not that you won't find any Indian influences in this album, far from it, but Aka does return to their first love, a mix of straight jazz and some jazz-rock, that made their early legend.

By now Fiorini's keyboards are fully integrated in the band's sound and in this album's case, it even starts the opening Worlds Of Possible that immediately reminds you of their earlier days even if the track is loaded with Arabian ambiances from Cassol's sax and Chandra's violin plus Gilmore's guitars provide growling replies. But the album climaxes a first time with the awesome 9-min Brothers And Games, where the group clearly alludes to the great Trane's world while Hatzi's bass is clearly taking a Zeuhl twist (somewhere between Magma and Present), but Cassol is the star of the show, even Fiorini is giving him a run for it, much like Tyner always pushed Trane further. You will also hear some definite King Crimson in the lengthy Dragon, which shows the Trane world slowly moving before fully delving into with an Indian percussion interlude House Of Shiva.

The album does a sudden volte-face with the modern with Three, a sung (by David Lynx) contemporary cool jazz, bordering dissonant at times. Another climax is the other "epic" The Wedding, played with the same Indian section as on Dragon, but climaxing on the amazing second third of the track, where Hatzi and Gallant groove with Fiorini's complicity over Cassol's awesome improvs. Wow! I'm sure Vander is listening.

An excellent return to form from one of Belgium's leading formation for adventuring music, but I must say that its material coming from three session is enhancing and hampering the album's success. Fortunately the former than the latter.