LA VIEILLE QUE L'ON BRÛLA

This interesting French record from the late 1970's combines many kinds of musical elements, creating a pleasant, beautiful and imaginative album. The most characteristic sound which drilled into my head from this album was a monophonic high-pitched keyboard tone used in it, shining like a full moon on a cloudless sky; I think it fits well to the album theme as I believe the first song is about "A Child of The Moon" or something (as I'm not very skilled with the language of Montaigne, the deeper meaning of the lyrics mostly didn't reach me). The album opens with quiet waves soon accompanied with tender electric piano chords, creating very beautiful moods, which are the key element for me when enjoying this record. The calm movement evolves to more jazzy territories, and the second song "Le Jardin des Plaisirs" begins in very traditional acoustic folk music style. Later the song moves to different themes giving me associations from symphonic rock arrangements. Third song "Il n'y a plus Rien" is one of the top tracks here for me, having calm beautiful feeling featuring that curious mono-pitched keyboard and a flanger-treated guitar chords, little similar used by Pekka Rechardt in late 1970's Wigwam recordings, which is one strong association from this pretty jazzy ballad for me as a Finnish listener.

There are also some not-so-great moments here like the fourth song "Satane Jardin", which sounded quite banal to my ears mostly due its vocals. But the majority of the music here is quite good. "La Veuve de Nicole" builds up slowly with a nice melody gathering more and more instrument layers upon it, leading to multivocal verses. The sequence fades to mantra-like guitar progression accompanied by surging electric synth sounds and deep vocal chants. "Le Sabbat des Sorts" is has a little Jethro Tull resembling feeling, combining upright traditional sounding vocal lines with more modern rock themes and instrumental runs. In the end there's also a maybe-humorous Emerson, Lake and Palmer resembling sequence, not perhaps the most essential movement of the record for me. "Les Loups" continues directly from the previous song, having peculiar timings, passionate French vocals, mysterious soundscapes from the synths and solo activity from the electric guitar. The title track "La Vielle que l'on Brula" starts little irritating way in my opinion, but draws the themes from the beginning of the album in it in a wonderful way. "Epilogue" gives a last good bye with nice set of musical elements grown familiar from the main tracks of the album. The Musea CD re-issue has also some bonus tracks, following faithfully the musical line of the album, but not being very essential at least to me.

One thing which caught my attention here is the really big bunch of people playing on this band, thirteen persons, plus other drummer in two bonus tracks. Also the album cover design is really one of the greatest I have ever seen. In spite of the few moments which I didn't appreciate here, I would still recommend this record to anybody interested of emotional progressive rock music with traditional music edge. A one slight reference for something similar on basis of the sounds might be "Moonmadness" album of Camel, which was recorded during the same years as this album. Like that one, this record also stands interestingly between the older and more contemporary progressive rock music, and also from personally perspective sing their tales to me from the times I was born.