CENTENAIRE

Quirky, I still wonder about this word. So fitting word, so fitting genre - Eclectic. They're synonyms. Difficult to categorize, hard task to talk (write) about, but when done right, it's also very interesting album to listen.

This album basically does the right thing, it's beautiful, but too simple for me. And also soon began to be quite tiring listening, because this music is too same. Using same principles over and over again, unfortunately. Using techniques that are targeted to someone else. Don't take me bad, this music can be lovely at times, but there are also parts that fails to please. And because this is why a lot of this music should be about, then we have a problem.

This music can also remind soft Post Rock combined with quiet parts of Golden (60's) Miles Davis era (this feeling is supported by clarinet in The Dress). And if there is one thing for sure, it's ending of this album, let's say last 4 songs they're strong exactly as the name of very last one, Strong.

4(-), but only because my girl told me so and threatened me with knife (on my throat, sigh), it's Italian friendship.

The amazing city of Paris offers again a uniqe band, a company of young musicians who formed Centenaire in January 2006.These were all multi-instrumentalists, Damien Mingus, Aurélien Potier, Axel Monneau (aka Orval Carlos Sibelius) and Stéphane Laporte.The debut of the group was recorded for the short-lived independent label Chief Inspector and it was released in 2008.

Being fans of Folk music as well as more contemporary stylings, the Centenaire quartet tried to blend two different worlds in a unique and personal amalgam of delicate, trippy musicianship, where light electric textures meet with the acoustic, almost Medieval side of music.The result is elegant, artistic and charming, despite the obvious lack of dynamics.The huge instrumental armour the band uses, including cellos, metallophone, clarinet, melodica and organ, helps the overall style sounding rich and harmonic.The overall atmosphere has a light Post Rock vibe, however some slight GENESIS and GENTLE GIANT inspirations are also detectable, especially in the moments where organ and acoustic guitars dominate the music along with the usually polyphonic vocal arrangements.The music is far from complex, but the intensity and alternation between the instruments offer very dense and elaborate textures with some good melodies and dreamy, rural soundscapes as a result.The electric passages are somewhere between the softer KING CRIMSON vibes and the modern Post Rock scene of ambiental and atmospheric moves, though the compositions constantly change between this kind of stuff and warm, folk-tinged journeys of another age.

The idea of the group was definitely succesful, even more the music is easy-listening and very sensitive, sometimes with a Soundtrack vibe of a retro movie.Warmly recommended to fans of atmospheric and mellow music adventures.