BETWEEN DAY

Born in 1970 in Besancon, Frabrice Bony started his career as a drummer, but soon learned to play guitar and keyboards, as a result he was the guitarist in his first rock band Hemera around 1987.Entering the 90's he became a session player for several bands and artists in albums and tours (including French legends Ange) and also became a member of Rictus, playing drums in two of their later albums.Since 2003 he focused on writing material for a solo album, a slow work in progress due to his professional commitments, which finally became reality in 2008, when his first album ''Between day'' was launched.

It appears that there is a concept behind this work, but the music is entirely instrumental with Bony handling the guitars, keyboards, drums and other programmed instruments in a work drawing influences from modern Symphonic Rock and even New Age/Ambient Music.Needless to say that I prefer the richer parts of the album with Bony having made a great mix of the isolated instrumental parts, leading to a palette of prog instrumentals with strong orchestral parts, interesting guitar melodies and even some retro references, provided by the use of Mellotron samplers and the superb piano lines.Echoes of CLEARLIGHT and CAMEL are evident throughout the release, the music is spacey, symphonic, dreamy and even Avant-Garde at moments, featuring a nice balance between piano, keyboards and guitar, producing some great melodies and delivering some light symphonic soundscapes.There are even some smooth jazzy underlines and acoustic themes added for good measure and I am extremely impressed by the way the man placed the vintage vibes into a contemporary sound.All things work pretty nice, until we reach the 11-min. ''Infini journey'', the quality of which is at least questionable.Propably serving the purpose of the concept, this is an over-stretched ambiental composition with a cosmic atmosphere, trying to fill the gap between calm Experimental/Lounge Music and no music at all, featuring slow motion soundscapes based on guitar and sound effects, pretty good for a Space Film, but not really counting as an advantage for a Prog-oriented album.The single minute of ''Thread of life (continue)'' and its symphonic sound with the melodic synths, Mellotron and guitar is at least a decent farewell.

''Infini journey'' lowers the value of an otherwise excellent one-man work with a trully professional attitude.Great symphonic-inclined instrumental music, suffering from the trippy journey of the aforementioned piece, but containing lots of goodies, composed and performed by a talented musician.Warmly recommended.