ANDROID DOMINA

Immediately after the release of ''The book of the dead'' Ars Nova hit the road for an extended world tour, featuring support keyboardist Naomi Miura (ex-Rosalia and After the Rain).They visited Italy, France, Holland, Germany, Poland, Sweden and England, before flying over to the USA.In 1999 Miura's temporary place was permanently taken by Mika Nakajima, who played all kind of keyboards.The same year the trio teamed up with Gerard to release the album ''Keyboards triangle''.They failed to find a bassist upon the recordings of the new album ''Android domina'', Ken Ishita and Noboru Nakajima provided these duities in a pair of number, but the album came to completion primarly by the new double keyboard/drums line-up.As with ''The book of the dead'' this one was released on Made in Japan for their homemarket, Musea for the European one, while Black Widow pressed a vinyl issue.

With the kinky front cover and the sound of a loving woman in the opening minutes, ''Android domina'' marked a brand new era for the band.With the absence of a regular bassist and the presence of two female keyboardists, the sound of Ars Nova took a slightly less pounding and more romantic direction, though the darker moments have not been abandoned by the group.This time they reminded me a lot of IL BALLETO DI BRONZO with all these odd keyboard fanfares finding their way from Classical-drenched church organ and tricky synth exercises to the typical Ars Nova E.L.P.-like masturbations on Hammond organ.GERARD and RICK WAKEMAN were and still are pretty good reference points, the first come to mind during the long and pompous synth drains, while the latter springs to mind mainly during the more apparent Classical influences.The music is largely instrumental and deeply symphonic with lengthy tracks and virtuosic solos, melodies are rather absent and the focus here is on emphatic, detailed and varied compositions with tight links between the movements, always propelled by the sound of keyboards.As aforementioned, the sound is a bit more ethereal (compared to the last couple of albums) but always dense and certain parts recall THE ENID's delicate and grandiose arrangements.

Ars Nova enter the millenium with a pretty nice keyboard Prog effort.The music is always magnificent, cinematic and haunting, but the addition of a keyboardist instread of a bassist has made more bad than good to a nonetheless heavily keyboard-led group.Anyway, this is a pretty great work for fans of E.L.P., TRACE, REFUGEE, TRIUMVIRAT, SCHICKE FUHRS & FROHLING, RICK WAKEMAN and the likes.