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LET'S START

Igor Wakhévitch

Progressive Electronic


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Igor Wakhévitch Let's Start album cover
3.63 | 15 ratings | 3 reviews | 13% 5 stars

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Studio Album, released in 1979

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Let's Start (21:33)
2. Taddy's Fruit Garden (4:02)
3. Eriador (12:04)
4. Monks in the Snow (3:48)
5. Taddy's Dream : Ramallah's Road (8:15)

Line-up / Musicians

- Igor Wakhévitch / keyboards, composer

Releases information

Artwork: Jean Guilmoto (photo)

LP Pathé Marconi EMI ‎- 2C 068 - 14.770 (1979, France)
LP Fauni Gena ‎- FAUNI 016 (2013, Spain)

Thanks to Ricochet for the addition
and to Quinino for the last updates
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IGOR WAKHÉVITCH Let's Start ratings distribution


3.63
(15 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(13%)
13%
Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(33%)
33%
Good, but non-essential (40%)
40%
Collectors/fans only (13%)
13%
Poor. Only for completionists (0%)
0%

IGOR WAKHÉVITCH Let's Start reviews


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Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by Dobermensch
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars Oh Christ... what an awful cover.. What on earth was he thinking on?

I'd rather not contemplate it to tell you the truth. Could this be the most revolting sleeve of all time? Quite possibly, if you ask me .

Thankfully 'Let's Start' is a surprisingly good album from 'Mr 70's Wacko Oddity' himself - Igor Wakhevitch - creator of 'Docteur Faust', his Meisterwerk from from '71, which is a 5 star album dead cert.

This, however, is very different, being entirely keyboard orientated. In a way it''s reminiscent of a couple of parts of Tangerine Dream's 'Ricochet' and almost as atmospheric. A pretty little album worthy of three stars and almost worthy of four due to the super piano reverb on the last track.. A tough one to rate, mainly due to the hideous cover.

Review by colorofmoney91
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars As obviously indicated by the album's beautiful cover art, Igor Wakhevitch has packed Let's Start with more dadaist/surrealist/avant-gardist electronic progressive music.

This album starts off with the title-track that sounds oddly optimistic for the first 2 minutes, but gradually becomes sinister with a doomy drone and a black pulse that makes way for ominous buzzing. This album is actually fairly optimistic for a Wakhevitch release, though, with its fair share of happy synth lines, and "Taddy's Fruit Garden" is even a beautiful (really) little ditty played on what sounds like it could be a toy piano - very John Cage-esque. "Taddy's Dream: Ramallah's Road" is a similar track, except longer with some floating bass-like synth lines added to the end. "Eriador" is almost like a jazzier Tangerine Dream sounding track played entirely on synths, and also is quite beautiful. "Monks In The Snow" is a windy and stark minimalist experimental electronic track that sounds much like today's experimental Italian underground scene.

Of all of the Igor Wakhevitch releases, this one is most diverse, featuring multiple textures in sound rather than just creating droney and ritualistic choral music with chamber orchestra arrangements. Another factor that makes this album stand out among Wakhevitch's other releases is that the vocals are used very sparingly, and only at the last few minutes of the first track. The vocals aren't singing, however - they're echoing, disembodied voices, only saying "I say let's start" over and over again until the words become a meaningless jumble of claustrophobic blackness.

Because of the optimistic and slightly less avant-garde tendencies of this album, this is probably the best to start with in Igor Wakhevitch's discography for accessibility reasons. Definitely a great album to end his career with, although I could always hope for more music in the future from this enigmatic weirdo.

Review by Sean Trane
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog Folk
4 stars This is Igor's last 70's legendary work and, as far as I know, his last musical creation put to disc. Released again on the Pathé label, this album features a vaguely erotic artwork (I'm probably below the belt here), and it is well in the continuity of Nagual, but better and more experimental (read minimalist and dadaist). It's probably Igor's closest he got to Krautrock, and in many ways, TD's Zeit or Atem comes to mind.

Opening on the almost-sidelong title track (23-mins+), we discover a synth and kb-only (with some possible percussions) track where dramatic vocal eructions (and eruptions) and echoed & looped spoken words are providing haunting and dronal soundscapes, where oscillators, sequencers and phasers reign supreme. The short Fruit Garden is an electric piano piece. On the flipside, the 12- mins+ Eriador opens on monophonic synth lines, but gets dubbed soon enough multi-echoed, but overstays its welcome until some organ keys add some contrast and provoke a total change of ambiance for the second half. Monks In The Snow returns to the Zeit/Atem realm, but beware of the screechy and strident arrows piercing your armour, despite the soothing presence of wind noises. The closing Ramallah's Road returns to the piano, but this time acoustic, before jumping electric and electronic.

This last inaptly-titled Let's Start (by the end, maybe?) is one of my fave of Igor's works aftr Faust and tied with Logos, but despite its minimalist ambient nature, it could indeed be a good starting point to his discography. Whatever happened to Igor??

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