THE ECLECTIC MEASURE

Hypnos 69's latest album is easily the proggiest to date, while keeping their stoner rock origins almost intact. Marked with a very strong prog artwork, the Eastern Flemish quartet has definitely reached the age of maturity and transformed the Southern/stoner rock-type music into a modern prog bands, the easiest to compare them with being Anekdoten. Indeed it seems that the addition of Steven Marx on winds instruments and keyboards helped them offer more of a musical palette to offer.

Plagued with one of those tacky filter effect voice over some conventional and crescendoing background, the opening track And You And Me is just a trampoline for the supercharged-up guitars of the great mellotron-laden 7-mins title track, complete with an epic guitar solo courtesy of singer/guitarist Houtmayers. Forgotten Souls is a mid-tempo starting loudly, but Marx's superb clarinet, then his unfortunate Genesis reference on Mellotrons lower the tone. The same clarinet is the main feature for the very classical-themed instrumental Ambiguity Of Reality.

The album seems t reach a second stage with a charged-up Antagonist, where the Porcupine Tree-like rhythm guitars and the Mel Collins-like sax occupy the foreground. Halfway To The Stars is a quiet acoustic ballad but like its predecessor fail to sustyain the hypnotic quality of the first part of the album. This feeling won't last long because the album catches its second wind with the second part (and much lengthier) of the I and You and Me (the opening track), which brings the excitement back, especially coupled with Ominous with its Schizoid Man feel. The Anekdoten sound references comes back with the 7-mins Point Of No Return with trons of mello, while the Deus Ex Machina is a fitting exit for a rather impressive end of the disc.

While a bit too derivative of the Crimson/Anekdoten realm, Hypnos 69's The Eclectic Measure is a great first full-fledged progressive album, and no doubt my compatriots will find their way