ALIENS

While Zauber were taking a long break during the 80's, their flutist Gianni Cristiani joined the former keyboardist of the band Paolo Clari in the new Clarion project.Almost all Zauber members contributed on this album, maybe this was the needed situation to force the band recording a new release.So, in 1994 Zauber returned with a new work under the title ''Aliens'', another product of Mellow Records.

The sound of the album is pretty close to the second part of the ''Est'' work, that is fairly commercial soft prog with Classical influences on recordings around mid-80's.10 years later not much has changed.Zauber insist on playing a sort of light-weight mostly instrumental but accesible Progressive Rock with a nice dose of symphonic and folk influences, led by the piano and organ of Oscar Giadanino, the flutes of Gianni Cristiani and sometimes the decent voice of Liliana Bodini.This time though they were joined by several guest musicians on cello, oboe, harmonica and viola, adding often to the album a more Classical-based color.Zauber do not forget to throw in some pretty memorable grooves here and there, so energy and softness are well combined to say the least.The inspiration is still here with ''Aliens'', the members of the band still show some pretty good skills on songwriting and the flute work of Cristiani is simply beautiful.However the album suffers a bit from the questionable coherence between the tracks and the bad-sounding digital synthesizers.

The return of Zauber marked no particular surprises, either from a bad or a good point of view.The flame burnt on with ''Aliens'' with the band playing some secure but well-crafted melodic Progressive Rock with symphonic and folk leanings.Recommended overall.