ARIES

Aries is a project that lays bare the contradictions in Fabio Zuffante the composer and arranger. The Finisterre work strikes me as a bit clinical, while Hostsonaten seems to most naturally blend that cold classical inspiration to warmer progressive rock. But both work as consistent entities.

The main problem with Aries is that songs set out to be gentle symphonic affairs and abruptly change direction, but not in a good way. There does not appear to be any focus for the album, but rather an insistence on alternating between gorgeous, if sometimes calculated, passages with female voice, and harshly played synths and guitars, neither of which are particularly noteworthy anyways, but they might work OK if they were on separate songs. As it is, they seem to hurt each other fighting for recognition. In the end it adds up to an album I don't much want to listen to.

The dichotomy is shown in all its flaws in the second track, "Coming Back to Life", a relatively short piece which just gets us down and mellow before ripping us apart. I'm not saying a more uptempo break was a bad idea, but the lack of flow is glaring. "The Eye of the Storm" is more of the same, as is the laughably disjointed closer "When Night is Almost Done". I am also just generally not enthused about the guitar style used on this album. I don't expect every guitarist to sound like Hackett, but the solos here lack all sensitivity. He has an on-off switch and that's about it.

"Morning Song" , "It Struck me Every Day", and "Crossing the Bar" all buck the unpleasant trend but also expose another flaw. This album tends to veer away from the Romantic style of Renaissance in which Annie was a vehicle for the moods, to the "let's use our sweet female voices" approach of Karnataka. Nice, yes, but where is the feeling?

Aries is an example of an album that should have been great on paper, but really lacks in composition and execution. Another Hostsonaten album anyone?