MUSIC FOR EMPTY PLACES

Warning instrumental album! It's best to warn our readers in some cases, we'll see the major influences a little later, but here it's more like real old-fashioned progressive without any text, and that could put some people off. With GIANT THE VINE, we therefore have a sextet with four soloists, two guitarists and two keyboardists; the most discerning among us will have noticed that the group's name smells like Genesis and the Gentil Géant, two formations from the golden age of so-called progressive music that we all know.

The eight tracks presented by GIANT THE VINE are calibrated, between 4:51 and 7:24 and that's fine because instrumental music adorned with overly long tracks is very often difficult to digest. The main frame of this "Music for Empty Places" is the absence, absence of the texts of course, but also family absence. Fabio VRENNA figurehead of the Ligurian formation having lost both parents in the space of a few months during the recording of the album. And we can go further because this record is an involuntary tribute to a genius creator, a tribute to the late Mark HOLLIS, who passed away last February after a very short illness.

Since we have just mentioned Mark HOLLIS and therefore TALK TALK, we find on this disc titles ("The Rose" and "The Lost People" or even the fiery second part of "Gregorius" armed with a depth and majesty in the impressive use of synthesizers) that the British could have composed at the time of "The Color of Spring". Even if the music proposed by GIANT THE VINE is more nervous, more punchy, than that written by mister HOLLIS, we are dealing here with a mix between seventies influences and colorful post rock, yes because post rock is rather white/grey/black than nourished by the colors of the rainbow.

A little aside on the influences, GENESIS of course (the keyboards of the opening title "67 Ruins" and the Banksian piano on "Ahimsa"), PENDRAGON (the energetic and lyrical guitar of the second title, the already mentioned "Ahimsa", my piece favorite on the whole album). And then those specified in the preceding paragraph, we clearly have between the esgourdes a disc of climates, which it is necessary to listen to many times to draw the auditory quintessence from it. And do as I often do, listen to the tracks in random order, ideal for a record of this ilk, because swallowing it in one try seems difficult to me.