UNIVERSAL

I bought this album, reissued by Moscow's MALS Records, after reading review (dated 16th of August 2005) by Vitaliy Menshikov (Progressor), which opinion about music I normally find trustworthy. And what a disappointment it is! This album consists of 7 tracks, 3 to 10 minutes long, but most of them are short. And five out of 7 are recorded live. Although quality of the recording is not too bad, this album is completely unlistenable to me. Music is rather primitive and vocals are just awful. I appreciate that this is sole album with vocals by Edhels, and, in my honest opinion, incorporating vocals was their big mistake, as Jean- Mare Bastianelli just does not know how to sing - he just can't sing at all. His voice reminds me about some amateur caraoke singer during the drinking party. This terrible vocal is dominating music throughout, so it's not possible really to tell whether music is any good, as it's totally lost behind. Menshikov calls it "lost" masterpice of progressive music. I could only wish such masterpieces remained lost and never found. Menshikov speaks very highly and convincing about this album, which comes to no surprise when you find out that he is executive co- producer of this release. This is my first encounter with Edhels' output, apart from "October Dawns" downloaded from this site, which I like a lot actually. Let's hope that other works by Edhels (instrumentals) are much better, if, again, we can trust Vitaliy Menshikov saying that this one sounds completely different from others. In other words I cannot recommend this particular album by Edhels to anyone loving good prog music. Stay away from it. But if, in the unlikely case, someone is still interested, I can sell it really cheap.

I give 2 stars to this album (MALS reissue) just because it's not a progrock at all. After listening I can call it either funk-jazz or punk-fusion. I'm serious! It's absolutely impossible to describe (IMHO) the music content. Take 25% of Robert Fripp's guitar on David Sylvian's "First Day", 25% of Tom Waits' "drunk" piano, 25% of "laconic" Trewasas' bass and you will have the EDHELS sound on "Universal". YEAH, the vocalist is NOT Jorn Lande or Steve Walsh but he matches just fine to special mood of the album. And one more thing: production is really muddy and poor plus pseudo-stereo (?) - this is the only minus for the album. I don't regret at all that I've bought it. Very weird impressions.......