ACCEPT

First, my thanks go out to Windhawk, for sending me a spare promo he had of this album. After listening, I had to ask him if this album was a departure from their sound on the previous albums, as there was very little of what I would call neo-prog on this album.

Second, this group, judging from this album alone is in dire need of a producer. Vocals are mixed far too low, and often have too much reverb on them, making them sound as if they were in a different room from where the microphones were placed. Guitars and synth patches (I presume thay are synth patches) are inconsistent. Some are far too loud, drowning out the other instruments, and some, especially what appears to be fine guitar solos, are almost completely buried.

But the mix aside, the album intrigues me. Rather than neo-prog, most of this disk is made up of more avant-garde music, with guitar and electronic noises interweaving with some orchestral sounding music. The best comparison I could make would be maybe if Henry Cow had teamed up King Crimson (circa early 2000s, doing their live improvs). I find it very exciting. If only I could hear the words.

There are a few less experimental pieces. Yellow Storm sound like a mix of David Gilmour's Pink Floyd and alt rock, and Deep In The Flow and Blessing Of The Lesser Gods are more traditional neo, sounding like Genesis and Styx, respectively. And again, the vocals are buried.

With a better mix, I could easily give this 4 stars, but the aggravating mix drops it to 3.

ACCEPT is the creative vehicle of Japanese composer and instrumentalist Hisao, who made his debut as a recording artist with "Silver Moon" in 2007. Following a second album in 2009, "Taiji (Confrontation)" is the third full length album by this project, and was released on Accept's own Prime Numbers label in the spring of 2012.

Accept's "Taiji is an album that by and large merits a description as unique. Introspective, distanced and somewhat detached music that utilizes sounds, effects, cinematically oriented themes and passages that showcase an inspiration from symphonic progressive rock into a whole that does belong somewhere within the art rock universe. The emphasis on moods and atmospheres makes me suspect that fans of artists like Vangelis and Kitaro might be something of a key audience, at least those among them who also find music of a more challenging variety to be of interest.

Accept is a one-man band from Japan with multi-instrumentalist Hisa being the only member.Some 20 years of composing and trying to establish his own sound,heavily influenced by British Progressive Rock,Hisa released a full hour of his tries under the Accept name and the album ''Silver moon''.This was released on Vital Records,actually a sub-label of the Japanese Poseidon Records,with only the help of female vocalist Izu on a couple of tracks.

The album is strongly based on Hisa's work on acoustic guitars,synthesizers and spacey electric solos,thus presenting a weird mix of Symphonic Rock and New Age with plenty of vocals,but also some dull moments.A very relaxing affair,''Silver moon'' contains some nice Symphonic-oriented instrumental work with nice guitar parts and dreamy synthesizers,however the next moment the album gets fully into boring New Age fields in the vein of later days-MIKE OLDFIELD with cheesy sampled flutes and strings and cheap effects.The instrumental acoustic passages are quite decent,somewhat close to the works of ANTHONY PHILLIPS,but again this good stuff will be often interrupted by Hisa's bad vocals.Speaking of vocals,female singer Izu has a fantastic, crystalline voice and being promoted to a full-time singer would be a good idea.The keyboard work is again in a Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde vein: Some orchestral keyboards and smooth piano passages are very good,the New Age synths though are pretty hypnotic without adding anything good to the music.

Uneven start for Mr. Hisa.''Silver moon'' is a quite calm work for most of its part and this kind of music should be heavily based on some memorable melodic material.Accept succeeds this at a short percentage,with plenty of the during time lost in uninteresting ''digitalized'' surreal passages.Recommended mostly for background music...2.5 stars.

Mobius is a strong sophomore effort by Japanese artist Accept, and stands for me as a good example of an artist managing to improve his craft the second time around.

The album as such is basically divided between two rather different types of songs: On one hand there's gentle, pastoral symphonic workouts with nods in the direction of bands like The Beatles and Camel. But also utilizing psychedelic and folk-inspired textures when needed, expanding the musical canvas in a neat manner.

On the other hand we're served dark, atmospheric pieces featuring space-tinged and almost industrial atmospheres. Often fragmented and broken down, at times sporting an ominous and almost decaying sonic exploration.

The end result is an intriguing creation, where the easy-going harmonic landscapes contrast the challenging harder to grasp mood pieces in a nifty manner. Good stuff from start to finish, and where the mood pieces in particular touch upon the brilliant from time to time.

Rather nice debut album by this Japanese project.

Slow, mellow and melodic symphonic rock is the name of the game, with some influences from jazz and folk music thrown into the mix now and then. Of the 12 songs, 5 are standalone tracks and 7 are parts of a longer conceptual tune; all of them basically exploring this style.

Nice music; but the long tracks and the long segments tends to get a bit repetitive; and are in general slightly too long for my liking.

Fans of mellow symphonic rock should find this release pretty interesting though, and I would guess that those with a liking for artists like Mike Oldfield might find this one to contain interesting material as well.