AUDENTITY

Dear friend Klaus got back indeed to some of sublime seventies act. We are used by now to have the very good Tiepold on the cello and the great Mike Shrieve (from the great "Santana") on percussions.

Still, during the opener of this double set, I wouldn't tell that they are here for the best. I quite rather preferred the ambient and desolated start than the more upbeat second half from "Cellistica". The short "Tango-Saty" and "Opheylissem" are only worth thanks to the great percussion work from Mike. But these cold and passionless synthetic sounds are not my cup of tea. The only funny point is that the latter is the name of a small town not too far from where I live. But this is not an excuse?

"Amourage" holds some far Eastern intro which is quite welcome even if not awaited. The beautiful keyboards lines that follow are just brilliant and should reconcile us with the great man. This is another wonderful track full of tact and beauty: a formidable yet accessible trip to eternal tranquillity, peace of mind and sublime prog act. The (only) highlight.

So far, this album leaves me with ambiguous feeling. Both remaining epics will decide whether or not we are confronted with a very good or decent Schultze album.

"Spielglocken" (and not glockenspiel as some Oldfield fan could have reminded) is a song built on a crescendo mood. Needless to say that I like the scheme. It is quite hypnotic and desperately cold and feeling less. But very effective in terms of melody, attraction and result.

One just need to be conquered and join for the ride which turns out to be more upbeat after a while (some six minutes). Dear friend Mike is of course not alien to this. What a great man! The second part though is too repetitive and lacks of good moments. It is actually quite a deception. But it was good to see a collaboration between two great musicians I profoundly respect.

The closing track starts with a violin/keys duet which culminates in some powerful "end of the world" tendency. It calms down a little to leave the place to Tiepold as a solo artist. He delivers some respectful chords but again, but there is too little manoeuvring space I guess to be really catchy.

The second half of this piece of music definitely reaches boundaries that are too far from my reach. I never could go in there. These improvisation textures with no melody are too alien from my genuine perception to be appealing. Brutally avant-garde; that's all.

In all, this album is quite hermetic, long and offers little harmonious moments: "Amourage" being the best track of the whole as far as I am concerned. It is impossible for me to go over the three stars rating for this "Audentity" that started better that it ended. It is the most experimental work of the man so far and I far much preferred his superb and melodic work from the previous decade.

Three stars (but this is rounded up really).

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