FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES

Clearlight's 1975 album "Forever Blowing Bubbles" hosts a great and promising array of musicians, with the keyboard wizard Cyrille Verdeaux leading the pack. Christian Boulé is also featured quite prominently, and his guitar sound is, as others mentioned, very similar to Steve Hillage's (GONG) trademark treble heavy, highly distorted spacey signature. Unfortunately, like Hillage, the intrusive and obnoxious guitar quickly gets annoying when overused. Joel Dugrenot contributes some excellent dreamy Wyatt-like vocals on the first track, Chanson.

The album is quite uneven, as there are many wonderful sections, then others where the band seem to be jamming without direction. The great parts are captivating and awe-inspiring, and the incoherent parts are a tedious listen. "Chanson" starts the album off on a high note, the great dreamy vocals lead into a piercing guitar, then trails off into a symphonic mix of wonderful. The best of the album. The next three tracks, "Without Words", "Way", "Ergotrip" and "Et pendant ce temps la" are very similar, and contain the excellent sections, and large jam sections. "Without Words" contains some wonderful piano and a middle Soft Machine-esque bit. There is a short choir/vocal track in french, the enjoyable "Narcisse et Goldmund". "Jungle Bubbles" is filler and has no merit.

A Space rock classic, "Forever Blowing Bubbles" will certainly excite some. 3.5 stars!