Cahen, François Faton - Great Winds (special)
SKU
01-MUSEA3101
"While not being consistently unified, the stylistics of this album is more than unique and can't be compared either to Cahen's old band Zao, nor to anything ever created under the banner of Music's Muse. The first five compositions on the album I consider uncommon pearls of Progressive. What's especially interesting is that different soloing instruments play a prominent role on each of these compositions. Trade Wind (track 1) is benefited by the piano. A Froggy Day (track 2) is the only composition on the album in which the powerful and very diverse parts of the real drums are on the forefront of the arrangements. Oriental Wind (track 3) is in all senses the hour of triumph of Miroslav Vitous, who, by the way, plays the contrabass with the bow throughout the album. Spirit of the Wind (track 5) is a festival of percussion instruments, while the parts of piano and contrabass sound like they are being performed in the distance. While there are no percussion instruments, with the exception of cymbals, on Zephir (track 4), they, in my view, play a very significant role. Well, it's time to tell you about the musical and stylistic characteristics of these and both of the remaining tracks on the album. First off, it should be clear to anyone that the Great Winds never blow randomly. All their capfuls, blasts, and even hurricanes can only seem to be created impromptu and, thus, the real improvisations aren't their cup of tea. The same characteristics have all the musical incarnations of the Great Winds that are featured on this album. While the overall stylistics of it can be defined as a unique blend of Classic Symphonic Art-Rock and Jazz-Fusion, most tracks on the album, being examined separately, turn out to be rather different amongst themselves. Both the jazzy improvisation-like solos feature three of them, - Trade Wind, A Froggy Day, and Chapel of the Wind, - and symphonic passages of the piano and contrabass, which, as you already know, sounds like a violin here. While all four of the remaining tracks still contain some elements of Jazz-Fusion, for the most part they consist of symphonic structures. As I've already mentioned above, the first five compositions on the album are masterpieces. All of them are filled with diverse and intensive arrangements consisting of highly virtuosi and intriguing interplay between the piano and contrabass, which for the most part sounds like a magical three-voice violin (tenor, baritone, and bass). Especially impressive, though, is Oriental Wind (track 3), which is just filled with a wide variety of wonderful Eastern colours. Here, Vitous plays his contrabass with such diversity and virtuosity as Subramaniam plays his real violin.... Highly recommended to the experienced lovers of both the Classic Jazz-Fusion and Art-Rock genres."-progressor.net