HEXAMERON

Come the millenium and Nick Magnus still got himself involved in various different projects, like in 2001, when he rearranged songs of John Lennon and Paul McCartney to adapt them to the West End musical ''All you need is love'', which was performed throughout the summer.At the same time he established his own label Magick Nuns Records to release his own music.His next work ''Hexameron'' was a concept album around order and chaos and featured the talents of Steve Hackett alongside his regular participants John Hackett, Geoff Whitehorn and female singer Clare Brigstocke.A few more guests appear also on choirs, violin and slide guitar.

''Hexameron'' was a much more focused effort by Magnus, enlightened by the comfort of a project, which wanted the composer to circulate his ideas around spacious and electronic atmospheres.It is though a highly symphonic album, always driven by the piano and synthesizers of Magnus, recalling his days with THE ENID, even if the atmosphere here is far from bombastic, it's mostly an attempt on ethereal, cinematic symphonic music with enough guitar, bass and drums content to consider it a Symphonic Rock album.There are still some GANDALF-like New Age climates to be found in the more laid-back instrumentals, most of them also feature some dreamy female voices, but it has its moments of grandieur as well, based on more bombastic executions and intense keyboard explosions.The music is still very reminiscent of STEVE HACKETT's late-70's/early-80's material with a special nod to keyboards than the guitars, but sharing practically the same mood for elaborate, melodic and refined arrangements with some fading GENESIS underlines.A couple of tracks revisit MIKE OLDFIELD's Celtic-inspired soundscapes and the music is extremely well-crafted during these cuts as well.That appears to be the main negative factor of the album as well, the dominance of dreamy and angelic tunes/arrangements and the lack of more dynamic and passionate material.

Anyway, this was another nice effort by Magnus, this was his beloved style after all, a smooth, atmospheric approach on symphonic music with plenty of beautiful textures and definite blinks to the 70's.Recommended.