ACEL III - LYRIKUS-SZOZAT

In the early days of Magma, with their more jazz like sound, they had a good number of members at the time. One of these members is Yochk'o Seffer, a Hungarian born saxophone and piano player. After leaving the band and leaving his band, Zao, and a few other jazzy bands, he turned to a more solo career. It goes without saying that he is a rather prolific and respected member of the Zeuhl scene of the early to late 70s, and it definitely shows in his playing. I was always interested in who was behind the scenes of those amazing, jazzy sounds from the olden days of Magma. Therefore I merely just decided to check an album by him out, due to fact I wanna hear the more jazzier side of Zeuhl music a bit more thoroughly.

First off, I like the style the album gives off. It has this aura around it, like it is a dream filled with horns, drums, and pianos, which gives it a very nice mystical aura. Furthermore, I do like how clean the sound is. The production and mixing is definitely fairly good too. In addition it does have that improvisational and weird vibe that is persistent with a lot of Zeuhl records, especially those of the 70s. I dig it, it's nice to hear some good Zeuhl jazz.

However with these praises, I still feel like this album has a lot of misses. For one I think this album is rather repetitive. This could be rather attributed to the fact there is only three instruments, but I'd like to think it's HOW the instruments are played, since even bands with only three instruments can make some great music, just look at Rush and ELP. To me, nothing really changes much. I never feel like the music is progressing forward and forward naturally, it just feels like it is in one tone and pitch and only rarely gets really weird. Heck to me this doesn't really feel like a Zeuhl record, more like a Fusion record with a pinch of Zeuhl. It sort of left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth because I expected Zeuhl music, not Fusion, and I love Fusion.

So while I still do like it as a neat little album, I cannot say I fully enjoyed this one. It left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth due to it's rather bland repetitiveness and the fact that this does not feel like Zeuhl and more like Jazz Fusion. I won't say I recommend this one, maybe I could maybe for a Fusion album, but not for a Zeuhl album, and even then, if you don't mind the repetitive sort of sound the album has going for it than this album will be perfectly fine, but if you do mind, I'll say you are best looking for another album.