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Visitors - Visitors CD (album) cover

VISITORS

Visitors

 

Eclectic Prog

3.59 | 25 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Utnapishtim
4 stars Is always a pleasure to find new prog gems. In Prog field is hard to know all the bands and artists, but certainly French Prog has often gives strange jewels as ETRON FOU LELOUBLAN , ATOLL. So lest go on a 31 minutes journey with some Alien!

This Visitors Project comes thank to the eclectic Jean-Pierre Massiera. He. singer, composer, co-producer (with Claude Lemoine producer of ROCKETS band), engineer, after some change of musical styles since 1960, starts this project enlisting 19 musicians, among which the most famous is the violinist Didier Lockwood that has played also with most known MAGMA. In another incarnation of the band with the same name Massiera / Lemoine released another album more disco oriented (such other Massiera projects).

On a site I've found a little curiosity. For legal issues, it seems that in USA the band used the pseudonym of FORCE 5, but I've found nothing with this other name.

The album is a Concept about extraterrestrial encounters. The opening song is a small suite very interesting that starts with a synthesizer and after chorus play a musical intro used also by symphonic band GRACIOUS into the song "Hell" (I don't know the origin, maybe classics) in their first album "Gracious!". The sound is often heavy-psych with violin passages and chorus. Sudden "stop -and-go" make unpredictable album. The songs texts are both in French (very appreciable for psychedelia in the beautiful "L'Extra-Aventure de Villas-Boas") and English in "Flatwoods story".

"Terre Larbour" (the name is a parody of Pearl Harbour) introduces on a synthesizer background the Alien's speech with a wonderful psychedelic chorus which repeat the title song between desperate shouts, as in an apocalyptic scene of alien contact. It will be included in a shorter version, to the first ROCKETS album. "Nous" is characterized by Synths, chorus and Lockwood violin. This together with "Visitors" remember me one shot band PLAT DU JOUR, with a good psychedelic rhythm. The album ends with an apocalyptic atmospheres in "Le retour des Dieux" which sounds like a good french hard rock, characterized by the usual backing vocals that sometimes remember me first DEEP PURPLE in "Child In Time".

A lost obscure gem, very interesting and surely unique. A Prog album between Psychedelia and good art rock.

4 Stars - Excellent Discovery

Utnapishtim | 4/5 |

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