FOOLS PARADISE

Madden And Harris

Prog Folk

3.63 | 27 ratings

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AlexUC

Progarchives has showed me some of my favorites albums. In this case, this album is up my personal top 20.

Madden & Harris was a teacher-student Australian duo that released one only album. Featuring a pure folk rock style, and it seems that these guys left all their creativity for one big shot, called Fools Paradise.

The music is pleasant, very calm and mellow, too much folk rock with some progressive touches. Most of their music is strings based, with extensive use of acoustic guitar, cello, violin, piano and some isolated percussion that works very very good. There are some touches of keyboard and synthesizer.

Most of the rhythms are simple, but very tricky, since with only three spins you'll be singing oh, you've got to live in a crazy world... without noticing. Just listen the opening track, and taste the beautiful sounds of excellent simple music. Some tracks are a little bit more dynamic, like O'weary brain and Fools Paradise Pt2, but also with extremely contagious rhythms.

The epic 20 min track isn't really an epic. It's a sort of copy-paste unrelated songs, that would be better as separate tracks. However, this track features some beautiful darker sections, like E.I.E.I.O. Just lovely. One thing I'd remove too is the taratata, tata, taratata, tatarataratata from Fools Paradise Pt2, very cliche for my taste.

There are some counterpointed voices, a la Gentle Giant, but with only two voices :D, that sounds very good too. In general the vocals are excellent, undoubtedly Peter Harris has an excellent normal voice that fits perfectly for the style. However, don't expect a superb singer like Hammill or Gabriel, that's not the case.

In general, the music is really good, nothing new (since this is 75). Some very good moments, others not so, but as a whole, an excellent addition to your collection. Don't miss it, mmm well, if you can find it :D

4.3 PA scale.

AlexUC | 4/5 | 2008-9-25

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