VIRGIL'S AENEID

The idea was not bad: Virgil's Aeneid is the only Roman epic poem and even if mimic of Homer's most famous Iliad and Odyssey it has all the right characteristics to be turned into a concept album.

That's why I find the three drones in this album very disappointing: electronic music has the power of creating mental images, it can vehicolate the author's impressions and in the worst case the author has the possibility to add noises and gimmicks able to give the listener an idea of what the music is about.

This is not the case. Bert Hulshoff has just taken three episodes or ambients from that epic poem and all the three fail in communicating the idea of the Aeneid. It's just the usual space music, unstructured and inconclusive. It's not totally bad in its own, but the shores of the Avernous river should make a bit more noise and also provide some scary sensations to who looks at them as it's the river which leads to the "aedes", the Kingdom of Deads.

The Sybil is a secondary character in the story, but is a prophetess and in the ancient world was second only to the Delphi's Oracle. It's a very good subject fro a dark ambient track but the author failed even on this subject.

"Deiphobe" can be barely distinguished from tha other two tracks and only "Aeneas and Turnus" deserves a mention as it contains some variations. The "ooh" background sounds make me think more to 2001 A Space Odyssey and would have been more appropriate if related to the Sybil. This is the only reason why I rate this album with two stars instead of one.

...but the Aeneid as concept album is a very good idea. Hopefully somebody else will sooner or later develop it.