ALL OUR FAILURES ARE BEHIND US

French TV has been busy. They have released two albums in less than one year and they're really good albums. If you're not familiar with this band; imagine combining jazz, prog, carnival music, and avant-garde all at the same time. Not only do they pull this off, but somehow they make the music sound fun and not too out there. Out there meaning dissonant, creepy, disturbing, purposely complex, and unsettling music. None of that on this album. In fact, listening to the first track "Desire and Consequence", I hear a pleasant fusion song with splattering's of musical mayhem that only FTV can provide. For the most part, this is instrumental music with the occasional spoken word or (aaahh!) thrown in. It is challenging but not so much that you need to study, or need a degree to understand it. Yet, this is an acquired taste that may take time to warm up to. If your an accordion fan, "Los Idiotas", the carnival music song, has you covered. How often do you hear accordion on a prog CD? Do you want to hear accordion? Ha!

Another favorite is "Sadly Time Travel is not an Option", where parts sound like this could have been a theme song for a 60's spy movie. The song takes you on a journey and goes to places that aren't normal. Normal meaning, you hear what chord comes next, before it happens. That doesn't happen with FTV and that's why I dig them. Pushing boundaries, never staying static, keeping you on the edge of your seat.

Overall, this is a super cool album filled to the brim with imagination and talent, the audio mix is real sounding and sounds real good, and if your searching for something different to put the spark back in your step, FTV may be for you.