ENGLAND

Amazing Blondel's sound in the beginning tended to lean towards a renaissance sound of Elizabethan style music, lots of nice harmony, acoustic guitar, flutes and other reed instruments. The music was rather simple most of the time, but very true to the style. The album "England" is a perfect example of the sound they were trying to accomplish. The first three songs are very pastoral and linked together as a suite based on some paintings. This suite is excellent and well-composed. The album would have benefitted well to continue with this concept. The sound and production is clean and crisp, the way you would expect this type of music to sound. The music is far from complicated, but it is definitely inventive and original even considering they vintage style of music they are making.

The remaining songs are quite short, remaining under 4 minutes and as such, are underdeveloped. The only real redeeming track is the "Sinfonia for Guitar and Strings" which I wish was longer as a typical Symphony would be. A very pleasant instrumental which would have taken the album to another level if it were explored more. Other than that, "Cantus Firmus to Counterpoint", though sporting an impressive title, is pretty much just a variation of "We Three Kings'. Nothing else stands out here, the rest are just overly simple pastoral sounding songs. Pleasant to listen to most of the time, but sometimes on the weaker songs, things get a little too cheesy, and would probably only be taken as overly charming to the point of satirical. I would call the album good, but non-essential. Nice but, except for the first 3 tracks, not very well developed.