MORSE CODE

MCT's second album was a double album even if its duration was about the same a Genesis or Tangerine Dream single album. Often carelessly brushed aside by progheads as psychedelia, this second album is certainly very prog in most parts, but it's relatively uneven as there are almost embarrassing 60's-sounding amateur psych rock as well. The usual prog quartet dishes out some excellent organ-driven hard psych prog-rock.

With the first disc totalling 25 minutes, there are only two tracks per side, both well vbelow the quarter hour duration. But the 8-mins+ Funky Alley is an excellent uplifting track filled with communicative energy and Simard's English vocals sound a bit like Irish Coffee's singer. The track easily glides on its own molten lava cushion and there is plenty of time for guitar and organ solos and slight cosmic noises. The short Soul Odyssey is an upbeat track with an excellent middle section, but it remains pop, but if all pop was like that.. On the flipside Graveyard Of Man is another exciting prog tune with constant time sigs changes and a catchy hook. A bass burp, another and Stick The Fork In and its 8-mins+ will rock your socks off, even if the tempo is a bit too straightforward. The fadeout is unbelievably wrong and long, with the organ dying in death throes

The second disc is barely longer even though it starts on the album longest Liberty, freedom Man with an interesting middle section, but recorded too low, but otherwise, exciting stuff. However from the remainder of the album, there isn't much to be happy: beit Cold Society or the embarrassing New Kind Woman, both are 60's pop. And while Sky Ride is a neat Art Rock tune with naïve but enthralling enthusiasm, Satan's Song was actually extracted from the album as a single, but wasn't that good.

Forget all pre-conceived ideas you've heard about the group's first phase, these guys play a fairly exciting organ-driven hard rock that is not too far removed from Atomic Rooster (not as heavy) or Frumpy. Different, the MCT albums? Certainly! But certainly not inferior either. At least their second album was.

Sitting here writing this review, I must start with one off hand comment - if it wasn't for the fact that I had already picked up Procreation & La Marche des Hommes at Spin-It (second hand record shop), this Morse Code album would have been the last I bought from them. It is a decent record. But it brings to mind a mix of Francis Cabrel fronting a rock band (On N'ait d'un Autre Monde), of Eric Lapointe detouring from his descent into Quebec's Mr Power Ballad back to, at the very least, the radio rocker he used to be (la Terre cesse pas de tourner), and overall, a heavier version of pop group the Box( Memoire du Sang), and basically a mish mash of AOR Hard Rock that is still present in the mainstream Quebec music playlists. The only reminder of their prog years is limited to L'ombre de ton Miroir, with its' light jazzy melody and playing. Casino does bring to mind the sound of latter day Ange, but Christian Decamps vocals & lyrics provide the little extra that makes their music magic to my ears, whereas this doesn't.

As it is, I am looking forward to playing the LPs I bought to see what the excitement was for this one time Quebec prog leader.

P.S. Neo-prog detractors would have a field day with this album, using it for examples of aspects of the genre that they deride for being too AOR rather than prog. And I like Neo !

If Morse Code made a splash with "La Marche Des Hommes", they bowed out rather ignominiously with "Je Suis Le Temps". Overall it is a rather indistinctive pastiche of 70s rock with a few prog moments, some good, some less so. While first impressions are often misleading in progressive albums, this one doesn't reveal a whole lot more with repeat listens, and certainly not enough payback for the time spent.

The album opens relatively strongly with "C'est Deja Du Passe", even if the boogie-esque vocal sections are redolent of Michel Pagliaro and other contemporaries like Offenbach rather than the contemporary progressive artists. This problem plagues the work of Mose Code. The highlight is the eerie instrumental section in the break. "Berceuses" exhibits all the hallmarks of a good idea gone bad - some fits and starts, finally settling in on an overly long and uninteresting lead guitar section with which to bow out. The peak of the album is the first two tracks on side 2, the rollicking instrumental "Piccadilly Circus", inspired by the band's proximity to the locale during the recording of the album, and the spacey ballad "Sommeil". The title track is the longest and, while not bad, again suffers from facelessness and a general lack of enthusiasm.

Morse Code seems like a band that listened to a lot of British prog of their day but tried to merge it with standard rock and blues, and something, indeed most everything, was lost in transmission.

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all... or in this case, not much. The unsettled career of this band was a virtual mirror to the shifts that occurred in music throughout the 70s and 80s, and they changed with the tide like a sand crab. This record, the very definition of corporate rock, was really the last straw creatively and revealed the intention of a group of skilled players to sell some records. As a result, it is a feeble if well-executed selection of commercial music with a dash of prog rock for flavor. The one decent cut, 'Hall of Mirrors', is a good pop tune and had FM blockbuster written all over it but like some evil plot engineered by record executives with plenty of money but a tin ear, Morse Code's 'Codebreaker' can best be described as what would happen if Eddie Jobson produced a collaboration between Survivor and Loverboy.

The apparent humor and other lyrical themes of this album are unfortunately lost on non-French speakers. But the fast-paced if occasionally pedantic keyboards overcome that drawback for the most part.

As a kid in northern Montana I seem to remember these guys having some very brief popularity under the name Morse Code Transmission. It wasn’t all that unusual for us to be exposed to quite a bit of Canadian music though, and I’ve read these guys toured a lot back then, so I suppose it’s possible they appeared somewhere in our general vicinity like in Alberta or Saskatchewan or something. Not sure, but I definitely remember this album cover because it kind of creeped me out.

But by this time their sound had moved away from that early seventies harder rock/psych sound and into this Harmonium-like Francoprog thing, and any appeal they had to mountain hicks was largely lost.

The organ and mellotron make the album, but I personally have never been able to get too excited about this kind of understated, pristine type of sound. The instrumental passages seem to drag on forever, often with little variation and meaningless repetition of mostly organ sequences that just don’t grab me at all.

The lengthy three-part title track offers a fair bit of dynamic electric guitar around the middle, but here again the organ goes for long stretches of repetitive playing, shifting tempo and key only to drift into another repetitive progression. There’s some Banks- like styling here I suppose, but the French singers don’t come even close to comparing to the dynamic presence of Peter Gabriel. This whole back side of the album really reminds me quite a bit of innumerable and forgettable mid-seventies pretentious pop bands.

So I think I’ll give this two stars since there seems to be adequate evidence that fans of the band and this style of symphonic prog seem to appreciate the album. Not my thing, but if you’re into bands like Harmonium and milder and more ethnic Genesis clones you might get into this.

peace

Realeased in 83,well passed their expiration date,this album dosen't have much to do with the rest of the band's discography.Former keyboardist/singer/main songwriter Christian Simard is nowhere to be found and it shows. The band opts for English as they did for their first couple of albums more than a decade erlier(Mors code Transmission and MCT II) but unlike those early albums,there is no freaky jams,no psychedelia and not much prog either. For unknown reason(and quite silly too)they even anglicise their names! Danilel LeMay becomes Daniel May and Michel Vallée becomes Mike Valley.UGH!!! The best song is the longest ''Help the Man'' where they strech a bit and flute can be heard,but sadly there isn't much more than this. The rest of the album is typical 80's corporate rock that was prevalent at times:REO Speedwagon,Foreigner,TOTO ect.... They even openned for Asia on a few Canadian dates,when Asia were at their peak,playing beore huge crowd,still that didn't help sales figures and they once more disbanded. Their 1995 second comeback effort is a lot better,due to the fact that Simard is back at the helm and they resort to french. A Cd was released by Unidisc in the 2000's but this album is better left for completists. Go for either ''La Marche des Hommes'', ''Procreation'' or ''Je suis le Temps'' all recently re- issued by progQuebec.

The Quebec progressive scene is not complete without talking about this very good album. The mix of hard rock and progressive rock is noticeable here. The sound of the electric guitar is impressive. Among the similitudes involved, there are Kayak, early Genesis circa Foxtrot and Nektar. The excellent lyrics are not outdated, since they are about the existential, economical & social problems of the World, more than ever present nowadays. The keyboards mainly consist in piano, omnipresent mellotron and organ; "Cocktail" contains an excellent catchy mix of clavinet and mellotron a la Greenslade. There is only one epic track "La Marche Des Hommes", a very progressive song full of organ, mellotron and bold electric guitars like the major progressive bands of the 70's. The one-channel lead vocals on "La cérémonie de minuit" seems to more leave the room to the catchy & pleasant music. The catchy refrain on "Problème" is very soothing. The accessible hit "Qu'est-ce que t'as compris ?" has been aired many many times from every radio station of the province of Quebec, and I guess it is still aired nowadays.

Another one in my old father's LP collection (humm... can I say impossibly scratched !). Never heard the "Transmission I", but this is pretty far from what Morse Code actually do. Simard is singing in english and guitars are on heavy riffs. Clearly, the band debut still sound like his first influences, some as Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin. Nothing to really gets you. I never really enjoy that one, but there is some interresting moments : "Liberty, Freedom, Man" and "Stick the fork in".

This group became one of the first full-out rock outfit in La Belle Province, under the name Morse Code Transmission, developing a naïve English-sung psychedelic rock over their first two albums. While none of those two albums will ever graces the top 20, of Psych rock lists, they were indeed charming but flawed, both are indeed worth a listen, but maybe not to spend the small fortunes the vinyls are fetching, nowadays, none of these having received a CD re-issue, yet! Hint, hint, Sean & Stephen!!!!

As Morse Code Transmission disintegrated, like the psychedelic caterpillar metamorphosing into the progressive butterfly, the group reformed and came into full maturity with this highly regarded album. As the Quebec scene was now reaching its golden hour, so did MC, and their brand of symphonic rock sung in French (as was the case with Harmonium, and later Pollen, Opus-5 and a few more) became in instant hit with the local population. But this was also very limited to their province, as English Canada will stay oblivious to MC.

Down to a quartet (the standard prog quartet) with Keyboardist Christian Simard as chief composer of the music but getting the help of outsider Chantal Dusseault for all of the lyrics, they developed a rather classic symphonic influenced rock in the range of Pollen, Atoll, Ange and a few more. This album, like the following Pro-creation, is a concept one, and is deeply rooted in the progress of mankind. Excellent lyrics and often excellent music, this was part of the classic Quebec albums from the second half of the 70's.

Although Simard is clearly the leader of the group, it is clear that the better tracks are the one written collectively by the group: from the awesome 11-min+ title track, to the hectic Cérémonie De Minuit, to the thoughtful "Qu'est-ce que tu as compris?" and the great lively instrumental Cocktail, the group smokes, blazes, cruises through your mind as a red-hot iron, with their excellent multi-layered vocals and the overall impeccable musicianship. The only weaker tracks being the Simard-only Pays D'Or and the two short tracks Goutte De Pluie and Problème (both sung with a vocal delivery sometimes reminiscent of " Le Grand Jacques" Brel), but hardly anything really bothersome.

The ProgQuebec re-issued (and remastered) version comes with two bonus tracks, none of which are obligatory, on the contrary. The disco remix of the instrumental Cocktail and the single version Compris, being both forgetful and best forgotten.

The first of a run of three classic albums, La Marche Des Hommes is of course more hinted at French speakers, but the singing is relatively accent-less and the lyrics easily understandable, therefore this is well recommended to others progheads also.

I know that some very die-hard record collectors will pay a lot of money for the Morse Code LP's, it's a kind of cult band for them! I prefer to listen to CD's, this compilation with 12 tracks features 5 songs from their acclaimed debut album. These are the most captivating and progressive moments on this CD. The long opener "La marche des hommes" (at about 11 minutes) delivers delicate guitarwork, ominous, Wetton-like bass play, a mellow organ sound and soaring Mellotron. Most of the following songs sound powerful and alternating, Morse Code succeeds to make both wonderful dreamy (tender acoustic guitar and emotional French vocals) as harder-edged prog (fiery electric guitar). Unfortunately most of the other songs are very polished and not really progressive. But the two final tracks are almost worth buying this CD: "Magie de musique" is very bombastic featuring Pallas-like Mellotron and the instrumental "Cocktail" delivers fine flute and Mellotron. This is a nice introduction to the acclaimed Canadian progrock band. By the way, I couldn't trace one single Morse Code LP when I visited Quebec, perhaps some reviewers plundered the record-stores before me ..?!

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