TOUCH THE CLEAR AIRA

For those who don't know, their first release, 'Beyond the clear air', achieved a bit of success among prog listeners (something that contributed for that was an edition by french label Musea, making the work more accesible for Europe). There is a difference between these two efforts that is favorable to 'Touch...' ' they adopted english as the vocals' language. This doesn't mean that now I like the vocals, but at least they're not awful. Another good evolution made by the group was to lower the tone. The synth execution on 'Beyond..' is frequently too loud and high. Nevertheless, Beyond has better tunes.

Now I'll dedicate the rest of the review exclusively to 'Touch...'. The violin and synth performances are outstanding in almost all of the songs. But as described below, this doesn't mean that the album is outstanding.

On the first track, many changes of rythym and harmonies are made. They perform it well, but sometimes it gets confusing. And there are no melodies that catch my attention.

A good tune on piano opens the second track, but further on they don't explore it very well. Their is versatility and mastery of complex arrangements, but it's not enough to form a cohesive and admirable whole. When the song switches to a more lyric execution the music improves considerably, and it almost makes me skip attention from the poverty of the bass solo within it (thats when an acoustic guitar or a wind instrument could add some excelent notes, but the group doesn't have a guitar player and there are no guest musicians). Anyway, I have a high concept for this track, including the fact that it's entriely instrumental.

The performance of the two vocalists on next track is unfortunate. They try to get a bit theatrical, and add some spoken words, but it doesn't work. Besides that, instrumental executions are fine.

4th track has an amazing tune, and fortunately they stick to it while exploring some of its possibilities. The best track for me. Coincidence or not, it's all instrumental.

The option of singing in japanese on next track is surprisingly good. And the choice of giving the vocals more space to perform is even better. Drum work is brilliant on the whole extension of this song. On the middle of the track an outstanding harmony stands up, but instead of exploring it more, other less interesting harmonies takes more space on the song.

Japanese vocals on last track aren't so good, even though there's a snippet on which its lyricism is fine. And the composition doesn't seem to go nowhere.

I wouldn't recommend this album as one of the best symphonic prog efforts generated on the country of the rising sun. But it's a good achievement to lovers of prog rock from that part of the world. 3.3 stars.