WINDOWS

TAI PHONG (which means "Great wind" in Vietnamese) was a French band created by two Vietnamese brothers with vocals in English. Singer and guitarist was the well-known (at least in France) song-writer Jean Jacques Goldman. Their second release was somewhat weaker and less successful than their debut. They were playing a kind of symphonic rock and due to Goldman's high-pitched voice one could think a French-Vietnamese version of YES. Although there are some similarities present in their music style they did not quite reach their level, on this album even less than on the first one.

The first track is quite well-done and versatile with several instrumental and only short vocal sections showing the closest resemblance to their debut. Second one is much more mellow starting with piano and sounds rather cheesy and love song alike. Track 3 has nice acoustic and electric guitar playing but not very much exciting as well. After a rather good almost instrumental track with nice guitar and keyboard and only short very soft androgynous vocals at the end there is a very mellow song that can be easily skipped. With track 6 some Asian influences are coming in, at least in the beginning. After a very atmospheric section it starts sounding quite a lot like Gandalf's or Kitaro 's works.Some mesmerizing guitar and keyboard play which is accompanied in between by rather quirky drum work. It ends with vocals and guitar and finally some bird chirping. Quite nice but not so much my cup of tea I've to say. The rest of the album are again quite cheesy sounding love songs.

As a conclusion their second effort is much more mellow but rather shallow as well than their debut. Not really a recommendation for progheads I'd like to say, there is not any similarity left to Yes, rather to some soft rock bands or more New Age type artists like Gandalf or Kitaro. In my opinion there are much better examples from France available!