CHRISTIAN RICHET

Christian Richet "Percutone", 1998, opens up with "To be continued" a super cool percussive driven riff, more in tune with be-bop Jazz crossed with Chick Corea/Jan Hammer styled synths, some distant electric guitar solos and his "nuevas musicas" styling. The flashy opener demands a slow paced follow up.

"Umaoi", track 2, resembles a slow/mid paced electronic, percussive, modern/primitive religious like procession tainted with a howling "cat in heat"like electric guitar, counterpointing the very attractive melody line and its "sacred" atmosphere components. It still amazes me how influential Michael Cretu's ENIGMA became on the long run, and this track is not absent of that.

"Before Day", track 3, follows the same kid of path but in a more experimental and scattered manner. Even with its charms this piece stays short of its elder siblings creative standards.

Track 4- "And the face said" is an atmospheric, minimalist, "darker" trip. Its mysterious nature works wonders in this album's context. Although this piece is not that astounding as other musician's "dark/drone" experiments, it is well written and achieves the hypnotic quality required but also their predictability.

"Percutone" the closing track, is more experimental in its composition, taking brief sections of some previous tracks and "remixing" them with a less firm hand focus, therefore its free floating, dramatic epic-like "closing" track quality.

All in all, some highly creative musical ideas and new proposals yet not quiet that frequent or consistent throughout the whole album.

***3 PA stars.

— First review of this album —

An uncompromising approach of Progressive Electronics, measured ethnic/psychedelia and symphonic like compositions.

The best thing, for starters, is how well this blend works wonders by the omission of a lead vocalist. (no tiring preachers subduing music in favor of their "leading" opinions/preachings). This all comes to mind because Christian Richet's Faces of Fire, 1995, will be any prog singer's paradise. But thank the Gods, that does not happen here at ALL.

I can not help but imagine all these dynamic, superb, high flying , attractive, creative and energized musical structures, which some great prog bands do achieve, but almost always turn out to be their vocalist showcase and therefore spoiled.

I bought this jewel by chance. Only thing I knew was that this musician comes from France. PA's bio will tell you the same (and that he is alive). So, to set this artist somewhere, I turned my eyes to Ambientland, where they do have a better understanding of these electronic combinations. Christian Richet's music falls under, what nowadays is named "New Musics" (in plural), which covers artists whose music plays along the lines of > New Age, Berlin School's electronic canons which encloses and includes Ambient, Meditative, Ethnic influences, which could have some brushes of modern Jazz, alongside repetitive composition patterns (minimalism for us).

And well, the list as such, does not include dynamic to the bone electric guitar Prog Rock (Krautrock, if you wish), which in this specific release, will tell a lot to Progland's citizens (in plural, again.)

What else? Do not be decieved by its unimaginative cover art, I almost did and glad that did not. Enjoy!

Super easy **** 4.5 PA stars on the rise.