DON GIOVANNI

Shortly after the release of ''La cathedrale du temps'' Patrice Le Roy parted ways with Versailles and he was replaced by Olivier de Gency (propably the brother of drummer Benoit de Gency).This line-up change was not enough to hold down the band from producing a second album, just one year after their debut.Musically more of a team work with lyrics again entirely written by singer/guitarist Guillaume de la Pilière, ''Don Giovanni'' was released in 1992.

Here Versailles abandon the short music forms of the debut for extended, long compositions with plenty of variations.Four out of the six tracks are 10 minutes or longer with evident 70's influences and a slighter turn towards a more Neo Prog sound with powerful guitars and heavy use of synthesizers.Still the Classical influences prevail and the resemblance to classic French acts like ANGE or MONA LISA leads Versailles' music for yet another album.They do combine with comfort the muddy Mellotron and Hammond organ washes with the delicacy of piano interludes and the edge of digital synthesizers to offer multilple, different textures that can get too dramatic and theatrical at times.Of course not all things stand on the right side in ''Don Giovanni''.The lack of original ideas is slightly disturbing, while the long pieces do suffer from inconsistency, containing both excellent and mediocre moments.Still there is some great balance between the vocal and the instrumental passages, the later include some bombastic moves with dual keyboard deliveries and even some very impressive guitar work.On ''Erre au fil des eres'' they come up with their best performance by far, a fantastic piece of atmospheric Symphonic Rock with strong ANGE inspirations in the keyboard themes but also some nice fresh ideas in the long instrumental runs.

Very talented group.The short time between the first and second work seems to have affect the result, which could have been even better in my opinion.No question though, this is a pretty great addition for all fans of Neo/Symphonic Prog with bright vintage colors.Recommened.