QUARANTE JOURS SUR LE SINAÏ

Nil is a very interesting French prog affair from late 1990s - mid 2000s, an excellent example (e pluribus unum) of Crimsonian progressive with a spectrum of sources and predecessors much wider than King Crimson. Quarante Jours Sur Le Sinai clearly shows influences from the classic French prog school, first of all from Arachnoid, Shylock and Carpe Diem, much less from Acintya and perhaps early Pulsar. From the newer French prog scene, the most obvious are the influence of Michel Altmayer, Shub Niggurath and (in melody making techniques) Halloween. Echoes of early Runaway Totem (circa Zed) and even Dead Can Dance may also be heard. But most of all, Nil is Nil. As Mandelshtam said, 'the entire ship is knocked up of somebody else's timber but has its own state'. The album has an intricate structure, it is divided into 8 chapters with two intros, prologue and epilogue, and each chapter is in its turn divided into a few short tracks, so 29 tracks in total, but they follow with no pause and are taken as one giant epic, one musical drama if you like, so the track list seems null and void, all the more that sometimes a musical change does not correspond with the next track start.