LXI

A relatively short release from Sébastien Gramond, the French multi-instrumentalist's fifty-first album is an experiment in what can only be called psychedelic lounge prog. It might sound somewhat silly by label, but the style really works. A fairly organ driven piece of work, the instrumentation is chimed in with some sensible lead work, and Gramond's vocals. While everything works here to a fair extent though, the music generally feels as if it lacks the direction needed to be a really good album.

There are only three tracks here, but with one of them almost hitting the twenty minute mark, it is fleshed out to the point of being more than a mere EP. 'Watch Out' begins this trek with a very upbeat syncopated beat that really brings the lounge label to mind; here things are wrought with organ sounds and pleasant harmonies. The track never feels as if its built around any particular ideas, instead just moving forward in a rhapsodic format. The second track 'The Amazing Neogram' has some better luck, using musical ideas I have previously heard from Gramond, but channeling them in a different light. The song is quite proggy by Gramond's standards, as well as dark, but these elements are used within the context of a song structure. The end result is ultimately a well put together psychedelic instrumental.

The obvious showcase here is 'Into The Vortex Of Death', which takes up over half of the album length. While there are recurring musical ideas here and the jazz fusion jams here are quite good, it never feels like a full-fledged epic unfortunately; moreso just a constant alternation between recurring themes and improvisation, courtesy of Gramond's interest in fusion. 'LXI' is a fairly good album overall, and being fairly short, it is a bite-sized dive into one of the man's more progressive sounds.

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