TERRE

My first experience with Julian Julien's music was his live album "Suraneé" from the Fractale project, and I really liked what I heard. Now I have reached the first of his "solo" albums (solo under quotation marks because he has lots of guest musicians) which is entitled "Terre", released in 2000 and with a wide musical spectrum, sharing jazz fusion tunes, with improvisations and more avant garde sounds. This album consists of fifteen songs ranging from 2 to 6 minutes average, with one longer track until the very end; all together make 45 minutes of good music.

The title track begins the album, "Terre" offers a gorgeous violin, percussion and piano sound creating a delicious sound, that perfectly works as the introduction of the record."L'attente" has a melodic style with beauty moments made by xylophone and some soft keyboards as background. What I don't like of this track is that after only 3 minutes it finishes, when I believe it could have been more exploded. The third song is "Tupperware et Bibelots" which is one of the long themes of the album. It begins softly, like an improvisation that produce an atmosphere of uncertainty, but a minute later the rhythm begins to be implemented with the addition of accordion and saxophone. I can imagine this music working as the background of a theatre play, or even a French or Argentinean film.

"Bencoleen Hotel" has an oriental flavor since the first seconds, and it continues with the same sound until it finishes after one minute and a half. "Souquez" is a track full of cadence, with piano playing all the time while strings (violin and cello, I am afraid) make great figures and create wonderful textures that give a very good track as a result. "Promenade" is a short composition with percussion and winds, here I put some images in my head and watch my own film. What a wonderful short song, too bad it ended too soon.

"Degung" is one of my favorite tracks here, it may be the closest one to zeuhl due to the dark atmosphere; violin, piano, cello and table produce wonderful music in this six-minute journey to the eclectic musical realm. After three minutes the song becomes even more interesting and crazier, truly enjoyable. "Les Deux" is a piano based track that produces the jazzy oriented sound of the album.

"Clementine" is another shortie. Here we can listen to a little girl singing for some seconds, then xylophone enters accompanied by piano, it flows for two minutes until the girl returns, and then the song finishes. "P'Tite Peche" continues with a charming sound, jazzy ala Canterbury style that is good for the ears. And the album finishes with its longest composition, entitled "La Tombe des Lucioles", it starts with a dark atmosphere in an uncertain way, but later violins, drums and piano join and begin to build up a wonderful structure, in which we will have a great journey, musically and emotionally talking. This song has various inner passages that share different textures and colours, moments where it is really intense, and moments where it totally slows down. This is a great song and cool as a last track.

I would highlight the first and last songs of this album, though all of them are very good, I believe some of them could have had more to offer, instead of being that short, so I felt something was missing here. That is why I am giving it three stars, though it is a very good album, really.

Enjoy it!

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