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Seven Reizh - Strinkadenn' Ys CD (album) cover

STRINKADENN' YS

Seven Reizh

 

Symphonic Prog

4.16 | 107 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

ghost_of_morphy
Prog Reviewer
5 stars Everything about this albums screams out Masterpiece! 5 stars for Strinkadenn Ys, and I am not kidding when I say that this piece is in the running for release of the decade.

I wish I could tell you something about this group, but there is depressingly little information I can find about them beyond our own ProgArchives description of them.

But anyhow, it's the music you guys want to hear about, and I can tell you about that.

This is a FINELY CRAFTED WORK OF ART! We are in the world of symphonic prog on this album. Earlier reviewers who mention celtic influences, for example, are mentioning just influences. Influences are the spice that seasons the soup, not the base that defines the flavor. Tasteful symphonic prog is what we have here.

I'm trying to rack my brain to think of a group to compare this to, but I'm not coming up with much. We have some great symphonic prog here, but we don't have the bombast of ELP. We have a more modern sound than Genesis ever managed to acheive. The egotism of the individual players doesn't surface as with Yes, and the music never gets overcomplicated like King Crimson's does. There is a certain neo-prog feel to some of this. Camel has been brought up as a group that this sounds like, but I just don't hear it.

What the last paragraph proves is that there is a certain uniqueness to this album, despite it being firmly and securely at the heart of the symphonic prog movement, despite it's amazingly late date.

This supposedly a concept album. My understanding of French is hardly perfect and I can barely catch a word here and there in the Breton dialect, but the sound and the composition flow effortlessly from one to another in a way that not every concept album acheives. It would not be so difficult to consider this a work of 11 movements.

As I have said, this is a FINELY CRAFTED WORK OF ART! It is also finely executed. Special mention should go out to Bleunwenn (Enora), who provides the best female vocal prog performance that I can think of since Annie Haslam was fronting for Renaissance. Also, Gurvan Mével gives us some really brillant yet restrained performances on percussion. He won't wow you like Bruford or Peart or Bozzio, but you will find a lot of imagination in his less athletic drumming. Arrangements and recording are also up to the highest standards.

Anyhow, this is a must hear album from the new millenium. If you like classic symphonic prog, find neo-prog interesting, and don't mind not understanding the lyrics, you will want to get this as soon as possible. Think of this as the symphonic prog masterpiece of the 21st century and you will understand my high recommendation.

Buy it and enjoy it.

Thank me later.

ghost_of_morphy | 5/5 |

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