ALICE

ALICE along with AME SON were the first Prog bands of their kind to come out of France in 1970 with ALICE releasing their debut and AME SON their first record "Catalyse". Unlike most I much prefer the AME SON album for it's adventerous and difficult style. ALICE recorded their album in England and were very much influenced by English bands. My initial spin had me thinking it was a fairly pedestrian sounding release but this is not the case. A surprising number of instruments involved like oboe, flute, sax, violin, vibes and all five members add percussion at some point. They were originally known as WE FREE before taking the more psychedelic name ALICE.

The opener "Axis" is my favourite by far and that start with the organ leading then the oboe is awesome. There's a lot of short tracks here with 12 songs over 40 minutes and actually the final four tunes are worth a total of seven minutes and it's not a strong finish by any stretch of the imagination especially "Mexican Song".

I'm just not into a lot of these songs like "L'Enfant" with the violin, vocals and quiet sounds. Or "L'Arbre" where I do like the tone of the guitar just not the song. I've written "not into this" beside "Le Nouveau Monde" as well. An uptempo vocal track with flute replacing the vocals on the instrumental sections. The two part "Extrait Du Circle" is pretty good but this record just didn't do a lot for me hence the 3 stars.