ONDINE

This Japanese band is rooted in 1977 and had some known progrock musicians in their line-up like Ikkou Nakajima (ex-Pageant) and keyboard wizard Toshio Egawa (ex- Novela, ex-Sheherazade and re-united with Gerard). It lasted until 1984 before Fromage released a debut album entitled Ondine (without Nakajima and Egawa who already had left the band). The seven compositions are or short and catchy or longer and more symphonic featuring tasteful coloured compositions featuring pleasant work on guitar, keyboards and flute, in the vein of fellow Japanese bands like Gerard, Mugen and Pageant. The final song is a bonustrack from 1981, it sounds very alternating and delivers lots of surprising breaks. A nice album that shows a frequent 'Prog Archives Rating dilemma'': 3 stars is too much for this CD (it's nice, not good) but 2 stars is too little (it's nice but fans only sounds too negative) ... so I rate 3 stars but I mean 2,5!