VIRTUAL FANTASY

A three and a half hour long album? Well, here we go...

Often, I have criticized some of French multi-instrumentalist Sébastien Gramond's albums for being too long. While the music is often quite pleasant to listen to, having such an extended experience with the music can make it overstay its welcome, and lose cohesion. However, most of those albums would be considered 'long' simply because they were over an hour. Although Sébastien Gramond is easily one of the most prolific artists I have ever come across, to release an album that is three and a half hours long is nearly unheard of. Even still, Sébastien Gramond has done this. While nearly impossible to listen to in one sitting, Gramond has been kind enough to divide this monster of a piece into a few typical album length sections. i would not recommend listening to the entire thing from start to finish in one go, 'Virtual Fantasy' has some of the best electronic work I have yet heard from Gramond.

The first piece here is 'You Have Lost Your Touch', which on its own is a forty minute stretch. Here, Gramond admirably fuses his funk and electronica styles into a piece of music that is incredibly repetitive with its ideas, but in a way, it works. Crazy electronic frenetics are then followed by the wah-wah sound that one could easily find during the car chase scene of an action comedy. It's difficult not to drop out of focus in parts, but the music remains pleasant and surprisingly professional.

'Be What You Wanna Be' is a slightly more experimental piece of music. Several years before the style of dubstep was ever popularized, the sound is quite prevalent in a few moments here. While I generally find dubstep to be tasteless, it does work well for Gramond's extended excursions here. The musical quality is not nearly as immediate here as it was with 'You Have Lost Your Touch', but ultimately things are much less consistent.

'Let The Rhythm Take Control' features a return to some consistent electronic work, but features ridiculous hip-hop vocals and samples that sound somewhat strange coming from a white French prog rock hippie. In any case, the electronics here make for some intelligent dance music that I find works very well for atmosphere.

Lastly, 'Who's Gonna Get Down, Man' shows Sébastien Gramond taking the electronics down its darkest road yet, sometimes reminding me of the apocalyptic vision presented in King Crimson's 'The Power To Believe'. There are funk motifs here and there, but the majority rests on strong, dark and heavy electronic beats and ideas. Once again, the ideas either feel too stretched out or underdeveloped, but the majority of the ideas are quite excellent.

There you have it, an album that only the most insane (such as myself) would sit through in its entirety, but despite its overbearing length, the music itself here is surprisingly good, for those into a wide variety of electronic music subgenres.

Share this SÉBASTIEN GRAMOND review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to Conor Fynes
• Report this review (#426748)
• Buy SÉBASTIEN GRAMOND music online with PA partners
• Show all SÉBASTIEN GRAMOND MP3/Stream
• Go to SÉBASTIEN GRAMOND page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Virtual Fantasy page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for SÉBASTIEN GRAMOND related discussions