A SECRET PLACE

A very good band from France,but with a very UK-styled prog rock sound, MIRAGE were found in 1997 by Phillipe Duplessy on keyboards, Joel Mondon on drums,Cyrille Forner on basses and his brother Stephan on guitars, while Stephan's wife Agnes contributed on vocals/flutes at the live performances and soon she became a stable member of the band.During all those concerts MIRAGE worked on their own material and out of 16 tracks,they chose half of them to be included on their debut.This came out in 2001 on Musea Records under the title ''A secret place''.

With such a band name and tracks with a title like ''For Andy'',I expect to listen to nothing less than CAMEL-influenced progessive rock with ANDY LATIMER-like emotional guitars...and,sure, that is exactly what is going here.Excellent melodic stuff, which lacks a bit in diversity, but it is based on strong musicianship, melodic arrangements and emotional instrumental parts,exactly like CAMEL.Guitars and flutes play first roles here and create soundscapes met both in early- and later era-CAMEL: from Canterbury Jazz-Prog to flute-driven symph-like orchestrations and highly emotional instrumental music, characterized by nice guitar solos.The keyboards here are placed mostly in the background,so the music becomes deeper and more atmospheric and,as for the bass work,this goes mostly from slow bass lines onto a jazzier approach.Imagine all this well-crafted musicianship supported by the crystalline voice of Agnes Forner,who sings only in English.This is first quality dreamy and atmospheric progressive rock in the vein of CAMEL or even ALAN PARSON'S PROJECT, DOGMA and CHANCE.Strongly recommended!

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