SHIMMERING LIGHTS

The D Project stands for the Desbiens Project, started by Canadian multi- instrumentalist/singer Stéphane Desbiens, leader of the band Sense.He wrote his first album ''Shimmering Lights'' in 2006, eventually released on Ozeta Productions.On this effort he handles all guitars, vocals and some keyboards, while he is helped by several musicians on bass, violins, keys and drums, like his Sense bandmate and Red Sand's bassist Matthieu Gosselin and a number of important guest keyboardists like Martin Orford, Tomas Bodin and Fred Schendel.

With this album Desbiens pushes Sense's style a bit further, introducing Fusion and Prog/Alternative elements to his composing and songwriting, thus The D Project's sound is a little more modern compared to Sense's. however the retro influences are still alive and strong.The overall approach reminds of PORCUPINE TREE, SKY ARCHITECT, SATELLITE, MILLENIUM or NINE STONES CLOSE, containing very atmospheric compositions, which are also quite flexible, but there is also a very strong PINK FLOYD aura throughout.Very deep and hard-sounding guitar grooves, expressive English vocals and a vast amount of lighter passages are the main elements of Desbiens' proposal.The crunchy guitar riffs are always followed by spacey electronics, lovely and smooth violin passages, acoustic textures and sharp symphonic synthesizers in an approach, which sounds very tight by the end.The calmer vocal parts, the spacey keyboards and some of Desbiens guitar solos ( like in ''September Solitudes'') have an evident FLOYD-ian color.The overall result is a diverse and very fresh album full of quite interesting ideas, both prog and progressive.

The first step for Mr. Desbiens leaves the listener wanting for more.Trying hardly to come up with an original style, Stephan created seven energetic compositions with multiple influences, which deserve some attention.Strongly recommended...3.5 stars.