EROS

I've always been surprised at the high ratings this album gets. It's a good album, don't get me wrong. For one thing it's not really Zeuhl, more Avant-Prog with a fusion influence. I can also think of a few albums from 1981 or so that are at least as interesting as this, if not more so. The music on this only album from this short-lived group sounds like a mix of pre-MDK Magma, mid-70s Zappa, Pierre Moerlen's Gong and early Henry Cow.

The instrumentation is mostly bass and drums with some flute, xylophone, guitar, piano and synth. There are almost no vocals. Almost. Highly energenic music for the most part. The album has a nice mix and all the instruments sound great. Very skilled and talented musicians here. The actual compositions, however, are not the greatest I've heard from this kind of music. But nowhere near mediocre either. The overall impression I get from Eros is that it's good...just not great.

The first two songs are much better than the last two songs. "L'Epice" starts off almost symphonic. There is some acoustic guitar, piano and vibes after 3 minutes. After 7 minutes there is a great bass and piano part which continues for the rest of the song. Some synth comes in and then guitar and vibes. "Arrakis" is the best song here. It starts with piano. Some nice fretless bass can be heard. Good flute and vibraphone. The drums kick in and we're off. After 5 minutes the tempo starts to increase. Just before 7 minutes there is some nice vibraphone/xylophone(either? both?). Around the 8 minute mark the drums have a phasing effect on them. After 9 minutes there is a little bit of scat-like singing sorta similar to Samla Mammas Manna. (I said *almost* no vocals).

The bass sound on "Bitonio" is really great. Very Zeuhl-like in fact. You can hear some "uh.. uh.. uh.. uh.." vocals. The title track is the weakest song. It never really goes anywhere until the bass comes in about halfway thru. Some crazy synth. There is a synth part which sounds like a recorder or something similar. The bonus songs are demo versions from 1978. The most interesting thing about them is that they have saxophone and Fender Rhodes. A good album but there is much better 'Zeuhl' out there, and for that matter, much better Avant-Prog too. This sounds amazing if the only prog from the early '80s you know is Neo. But this pales in comparison to other prog albums from the same time. 3.5 but it's not worth 4 stars, so it'll be 3.