CLEARLIGHT

"Forever Blowing Bubbles" opens with "Chanson", which is a track featuring vocals, which is a first for Clearlight, as their debut album was fully instrumental. "Forever Blowing Bubbles" is also predominantly an instrumental release, but there are in addition to "Chanson" a few other tracks featuring vocals. While the debut album featured only two 20 minutes long compositions, "Forever Blowing Bubbles" features seven more "regular" length tracks (2 to 8 minutes long). The overall music style is similar, although the shorter song lengths make these tracks a bit more concise and also more easily accessible. Psychedelic rock, symphonic progressive rock, meditative new-age atmospheres, and louder more energetic jazz/rock influenced sections. That´s what you get on "Forever Blowing Bubbles".

The album features a detailed, organic, and overall great sounding production, where all instruments and the sparse vocals are audible in the mix. Upon conclusion "Forever Blowing Bubbles" is a pretty eclectic progressive rock album for fans of ethereal atmospheres but also jazz/rock energy, and psychedelic excursions. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.

It doesn't help, in light of my anticipation of it being Oldfield-esque, that this is indeed a weak, new-age carbon copy of a style of Prog that I can not be any more bored by. Forgive me. As a quick aside,Tubular Bells will always stump me as to why it is still so heralded... Took me a long while to find any Oldfield that I genuinely liked. Back to Clearlight, in their case, just listen to Forever Blowing Bubbles and we'll all pretend this never happened. I'm sure Virgin Records is wont to be included in that. [Or this is so far removed from them, it's like they have nothing at which to bat their pretty little eyes.]

On this second album, we have vocals but of a pretty good quality, listen to "Narcisse et Goldmund" for soothing female vocals. I consider music to be decently varied - strong and slow instrumental pieces with different instrumentation focus, sometimes it's synths, sometimes piano or plenty of guitar soloing like in the dynamic Gong-unsimilar "Without works". A couple of sonically experimental pieces may not work in long term, such as "Sweet Absinthe" or "Jungle Bubbles" nevertheless they aren't fillers. A hidden dark horse among French progressive scene of the 70's with impressive international lineup, not typical for French projects of that time.

The inspiration for Impressionist Symphony sparkled already in 2004 at the French Embassy where Verdeaux was giving a solo piano concert. The ambassador described his style as impressionistic. "I love Ravel, Debussy, Chopin and Satie, so I thought this impressionist style was part of the 'French touch' cultural heritage, since most of the impressionist painters were also French." Thus came the idea to compose music to glorify that art movement.

The 64-minute instrumental album features several co-musicians such as guitarist Steve Hillage, synth wiz Tim Blake and saxophonist Didier Malherbe, all members of GONG who appeared also on Clearlight Symphony. Graig Fry adds his violin, and on drums is excellent Paul Sears. In the booklet the eight pieces are accompanied by paintings of e.g. Renoir, Monet, Degas and Van Gogh - such a nice idea!

The music flows brightly and dynamically and indeed it captures the sense of mpressionism, the spur of the moment. Some listeners may find the compositions a bit too ambivalent, but all in al this is a fine, gorgeously produced prog album made with pure passion and dedication. The booklet even contains album covers and brief introductions to the Clearlight discography. This pleasant extra makes me round my 4,5 stars upwards. Where are you, Clearlight fans??

One of the things I love is that it is a concept album. The theme is one grand scheme of events. Or something like that. I love concept albums but of course it means nothing if it's musically faulty. In this case it's not. "Les contes du singe fou" is unlike it's predecessors a more "common" prog album in the sense that it has vocals and more structured parts, balancing nicely between complexity and accessibility. There is a wonderful melodic nature to it all, which I like, in that symphonic sort of way. There are hints of Genesis at times but the omnipresent and wonderfully flowing piano gives it a classical feel. The two longer epics, "The key" (13.42 minutes) and "Time skater" (15.29 minutes), are the main performers of the album, not only because of their duration. It is multi-movement affairs that really grabs my attention. I will not go into detail discussing the different sections. I will make do by stating that they are fantastic creations that really gets my blood flowing. The shorter tracks are very good aswell. "Stargazer" is a lovely little piece, as is the instrumental "Soliloque" and the ending "Return to the source".

I like just about everything with this album. The intensity, the beauty, the classical feel, the spacey theme, the vocals and just to keep it short the rest of it. The vocalist Ian Bellamy may not have a powerful voice but a clean and slightly fragile one that fits in well with the music. Clearlight was, in my opinion, never better than on "Les contes du singe fou". This is the album where everything fell into place, at least for me. I was instantly hooked to it's melodic and dramatic majesty, pompous and overblown just the way I like it. Don't let the monkey fool fool you. Do let the ape lead you into the universe of Clearlight and it's opulent beauty and dramatic complexity.

First and iconic album of CLEARLIGHT, signed by Virgin, "Clearlight Symphony" merges the piano composition and musicianship talents of classically trained keyboardist Cyril Verdeaux with the arrangements of space rock and early electronic technologies of the mid-70's. Cyril Verdeaux first recorded in 1973 two ambitious 20 minutes long piano suites. Prestigious guest musicians from GONG - Steve Hillage, Didier Malherbe and Tim Blake - and LARD FREE were further invited to overdub the tracks by adding complex instrumentation and soli. However, the music, fully instrumental and piano-driven, do not resemble neither the psychedelic nonsense style of GONG nor the krautrock of LARD FREE.

Featuring the three members from GONG, the first movement is "clearlight-ly" the best. A bombastic and dreamy composition, with gorgeous arrangements. The epic beginning lifts you off from the ground to make you fly through the cosmos. Great! Then the music calms down and become relaxing, and even a little jazzy, in the style of SOFT MACHINE. After this passage, the piano get more nervous. Fasten your seatbelts for whirlwinding guitar and synthesizer wormholes! The track finishes by reusing the beautiful theme from the beginning. Wow! These 20 minutes were just perfect and mindblowing... A must listen for every space rock fan! 5 stars.

The second movement features LARD FREE's leader Gilbert Artman but is more uneven. Softer and lazier the than the first part, it alternates pleasant melancholic and spacey atmospheres with futuristic sounds and trippy guitar interventions, but also contains odd experimental and noisy passages. Lacking a bit of unity, it sometimes feels a little lengthy. As before, it concludes with the beginning theme of the first movement. Nonetheless, although not as impressive as the first one, this movement still remains rather nice. 3 stars.

"Clearlight Symphony" carries well its name. The music truly is an awaken dream, a journey into the magic cosmos. This fusion between piano classical music and space rock is quite unique in the progressive world. Cyrille Verdeaux's first opus already displays his musical identity and talent. Unfortunately, such inspiration won't be recovered in his next compositions...

CLEARLIGHT's best album, clearly essential for space rock lovers! Even classical piano fans can give it a try...

The opening cut is a surprising piece by a band like Clearlight, because it sounds a lot like mid-70's GENESIS, especially taking the clean and non-accented vocals of Bellamy into consideration.It's lovely semi-theatrical Symphonic Rock with some beautiful organ parts and inventive melodies, definitely lacking the unique spark of Clearlight, on the other hand beeing extremely well-played and attractive with some superb instrumental work.But the familiar Clearlight will return with ''La cle part two'', which is exactly what the band was known for.Some sort of Symph/Jazz Rock with Lockwood being the main man here and for this reason this sounds a lot like MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA having a Classical-educated pianist, as Verdeaux delivers his known elegant piano lines next to some discreet organ themes.Very good Prog Fusion with some smoky interactions and solos.What's most impressive is the fact that Mandin was given composing rensponsibities in the album and ''Soliloque'' was his introduction, basically another symphonic-inclined instrumental piece with delicate piano work and a developing atmosphere with Lockwood entering at some point with his melancholic violin and the marching drumming making the atmosphere even more dramatic.Mandin's biggest bet though was the 15-min. ''Time skater'', which did not differ much from the structure of the opening side.It's very much GENESIS-influenced in its first minutes with theatrical vocals, Classical-spiced piano themes and some bombastic moments, but its longest part is more of a Jazz Fusion affair with sinister piano/violin battles and pounding bass and drum parts, featuring lots of solos and dark grooves.The closing and quite short ''Stargazer'' and ''Return to the source'' are hardly noticable, coming after the long tracks, but even these cuts present an interesting combination of Progressive Rock and Fusion with a dramatic edge and a light spacey atmosphere.

With the synthesizer dominance being quite reduced, Clearlight have taken a turn towards a more direct affair between Symphonic Rock and Jazz Fusion.It's like GENESIS sharing the stage with MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA piece after piece and the result is charming, demanding and pretty generous.Strongly recommended...3.5 stars.

Perhaps you could say Clearlight has taken classical music into rock music without playing real classical music but real progressive rock. The cover shows a lot of birds in different sizes, biggest of them is a white swan. It's strange how few have reviewed this record when it is so good comparing with music of today. I have hard to pick the best tracks here for you because the album should be enjoyed as full but I think "Renoir En Coulour", "Pissarro King", "Gaughin Dans L'Autre" and "Lautrec Too Loose" are those I like most. Every aspect here is marvelous: the fantastic instruments, the guitar which sounds like Mike Oldfield at his best moments, the wind instruments, the crazu violin flying around and the massive wall of keyboards. This record is bright shining everywhere and I like you to get to know it you too. This is totally new to me but it reminds me of a lot of great music such as the Spanich group "Los Canarios" or "Harmonium" and some others. To argue about this could be hard but this record stands out. I recommend it warmly and I will return here very soon. Five stars!