LES PORCHES

It did not take me many minutes to understand that I was facing a serious battle in my intent to do a review of this album. It is a special album, and in as many meanings as possible.

The music comes across as a mix of baroque, prog folk, jazz and symphonic prog. The more folky version of Harmonium springs to mind. So does Gnidrolog, Focus, Return To Forever, Gentle Giant and Soft Machine too. In other words, an eclectic bunch of bands.

The music here is pastorial and minimalistic throughout. It is not bombastic or big. Just pretty minimalistic. The main instruments are guitars, piano, keyboards, sax, flute, bass, drums and xylophone. It took me some time to get that last one, btw. I was scratching my head there for a while. This album is listed under Fusion/Jazz and I agree with that. But it is not jazz/fusion as we knows it. It is more folk music based jazz. And that my friends is a contradiction in terms. But Maneige does not do logical things.

There are five songs on this album. Les porches De Notre-Dame is a twenty minutes long epic which blends folk music with jazz and some symphonic prog at the end. This is a superb song which got my attention when I heard this album for the first time some weeks ago. The short one minutes long La Grosse Torche (a good piano piece) neatly brings us over to the fifteen minutes long Les Aventures De Saxinette Et Clarophone. This piece starts with folk, goes over into a straight jazz piece before it includes some avant-garde stuff and return to jazz again. This is an excellent piece of music. The last two pieces of music is the rather short meditation pieces Chromo part I and Chromo part II. Both of them are good, btw.

I think this album deserve the reputation it has got. It is a strange album because it is strictly speaking neither a Fusion/Jazz, Symphonic Prog or a Prog Folk album. The music is excellent crossover, created by musicians who delivers it with both conviction and flair. This album is another eyeopener for me and an important one too. I live for eyeopeners like this one. Nice cover btw and a four star for this album.

4 stars

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