TERPANDRE

In the Eighties I often visited Paris because of its wonderful atmosphere, great musea, street musicians and the Eifel Tower. Of course I searched for record stores, one of the best was in the mega store FNAC. There I bought a lot of French progrock LP's, this is one of the most beautiful.

Terpandre was a six piece band including two keyboardists and a violin player. The five songs on this LP (the CD contains two live bonustracks) sound a bit subdued,often very dreamy and mellow with only some more bombastic parts as in the final part of "Caroussel" (propulsive drums). The interplay between the instruments is often subtle, especially the two keyboard players do very well delivering majestic violin-Mellotron waves (with echoes from early KING CRIMSON), beautiful classical piano (at some moments a bit jazzy like in "Caroussel") and some short synthesizer flights. The work on the violin evokes a bit the fusion sound from Jean-Luc Ponty (also a Frenchman) and the guitarplay has hints from ROBERT FRIPP but less fiery.

. To me this sounds as wonderful 'candlelight prog'