SEVEN

Seven is a very ambitious album, built upon an original and unconventional vision of the seven sins by the Reed brothers. According to the credits, its recording took more than one year and a half and its total length exceeds 75 minutes for only seven songs, which at first made me anxious since I don't know many LP's of such length without repetitions or superfluous parts. After more than twenty listens, I can assert that Magenta avoids perfectly the stumbling block (at least on this album).

Seven has all the required ingredients to make a great album : beautiful melodies, brilliant and very diverse instrumental passages, perfect vocals but, above all, I find the music and lyrics very moving. That could seem paradoxical since it is pretty obvious that Rob Reed is a very meticulous and precise guy but, despite an alleged lack of spontaneity in the making, this album is all about emotions. I am not ashamed to confess that, depending on my mood, when Christina sings the simple words "every time you smile the sun shines down on me", it just bucks me up or moves me to tears.

Of course, inevitably, because every song but one reaches or goes past the ten minutes mark, this album will take many listens to perceive all its details and subtleties but I found it to be a very rewarding quest.

Magenta may be a hard band to classify : sometimes neo progressive, sometimes symphonic, sometimes art rock, sometimes solely prog-related. My advice is to forget about classification and just listen to Seven without prejudice : you should not be disappointed. I put myself on a diet about the five stars rating so I will go with 4,5 but we are close from a masterpiece, very close .

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