PROGRESSIVE ROCK COVERS

The guys from the French label have an excellent taste for good progrock, very refined and eclectic because they have compiled this captivating CD featuring covers from great progrock bands like ELP, King Crimson, VDGG, Trace and ... The Doors and Led Zeppelin! All twelve songs on this compilation are previously released on other Musea CD's except the final track.

Track list: 1 - Toccata (7'39) 2 - Time (4'59) 3 - Immigrant Song (2'53) 4 - Birds Medley (7'52) 5 - Travelling Lady (5'33) 6 - Darkness - 11/11 (7'08) 7 - Child In Time (9'46) 8 - House With No Door (4'07) 9 - Kashmir (14'39) 10 - Dynamite (2'56) 11 - Strange Days (3'06) 12 - Exiles (4'51)

Performing bands: 1. GERARD (Japan) 2. PANGAEA (USA) 3. BLUE SHIFT (USA) 4. ARS NOVA (Japan) 5. LONDON UNDERGROUND (Italy) 6. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS (Italy) 7. QUIDAM (Poland) 8. HALLOWEEN (France) 9. NOW (Belgium) 10. DIFICIL EQUILIBRIO (Spain) 11. VISIBLE WIND (Canada) 12. Thierry CRUSEM & L'AUTRE SYSTEME (France)

In general the level on this CD is good, especially Gerard with Toccata from ELP and Ars Nova with Birds Medley from Trace featuring splendid keyboard-driven prog with an awesome rhythm-section. Blue Shift with Immigrant Song from Led Zeppelin (very dynamic with captivating integration of organ) and Visible Wind with Strange Days from The Doors (very pleasant atmosphere, strong vocals and fiery wah-wah guitar). I don't know the two VDGG songs by London Underground and Halloween but I enjoyed it. The rendition of the classic Child In Time from Deep Purple turned out to be the biggest disappointment on this CD, what a poor female vocals, only the strong work on flute and sensitive guitar saved Quidam! Very remarkable is Exiles from King Crimson by Thierry Crusem & L'Autre Systeme, it sounds very compelling with strong vocals, a dynamic rhythm-section, this band has succeeded to sound original while playing a cover.

In my opinion Musea has released a very interesting CD compilation although most songs can be found on earlier Musea CD releases.

A rather nice collection of cover tunes here, and a release mostly of interest to people into the art of cover tunes.

Blue Shift has the best track here with an energetic version of "Immigrant Song".

Very good performances also by Quidam with their live and mellow version of "Child in Time", Halloweens emotional piano ballad version of "House with No Door", Now with their crisp and clean version of "Kashmir" with multi-layered vocal parts, Dificil Equilibrio for their psychedelic space explosion of a song and Visible Winds garage-rock tinted version of "Strange Days".

Nice but not exceptional performances by Pangea, Ars Nova, London Underground and Thierry Crusem. Gerards Toccata gets tedious with a lot of soloing, especially the long drum workouts. And Twenty-Four Hours song here is killed by an extremely sharp drumsound placed way too high in the mix.

Overall a good sampler in my opinion.

A fairly good compilation released by Musea in 2006 with known prog bands covering even more well know bands from the past. The spectre is wide here from symphonic prog toheavy prog to eclectic all is covered with precizion and in some parts it sounding better then the original. Personaly I like Blue Shift with Imigrant song by Led Zeppelin, an up tempo tune that sounds very good in this context even the voice is almost like Plant had it 40 plus years ago. Another worthy one is House With No Door original by Van Der Graaf Generator here performed by french Halloween, really beautiful covered, smooth and elegant. Belgian neo prog band Now think very well when they choose Kashmir in their repertoire, here is almost perfect, nice. All in all a pleasent compilation, good songs and good bands from both baricades, 3.5 stars.