CD

The Lion’s Dream is een zeer persoonlijk document van Ton Scherpenzeel, een man die zichzelf al lang niet meer hoeft te bewijzen. Hij is een begenadigd toetsenist en componist die onder meer in Camel speelde. Scherpenzeel componeerde tal van werken voor Youp van ‘t Hek, schreef muziek voor musicals en hij leidt tot op de dag van vandaag Kayak. Na bijna dertig jaar is er een nieuw soloalbum waarop hij zelf zingt en muzikaal nadrukkelijk teruggrijpt naar de Middeleeuwen.

XII Alfonso is one of those progressive bands not everyone is familiar with. The French brothers Philippe and Francois Claerhout have recorded and contributed to several albums from the mid-nineties onwards. Their trademark is prog with a folky touch and a positive vibe of originality. After a kind of movie fragment, there are echoing keyboards and a trumpet(sample), then bass, drums and electric guitars join in and we have a really instrumental prog piece with a touch of jazz in it.

Workshop is the solo debut from Joop Wolters, music teacher and lead guitarist of Arabesque, a Dutch prog metal band. The album is rather short, but long enough to let the world know that in the Netherlands there are also some extremely talented guitar players around. With a little help from his friends Thijs Cuppen (keyboards on Endless Love) en Nathan van der Wouw (drumprogramming on Headstart and Flamoose), Wolters has played this entire album mostly on his own.

Whilst John Wetton and Geoffrey Downes have their hands full touring with the original Asia, the release of Icon in 2005 was a pleasant surprise because then, nobody knew that the original line-up of Asia would reunite. With Icon II it’s different. This album was composed and recorded during the negotiations on Asia’s resurrection and the disbanding of the ‘other Asia’ with John Payne.

Eternal Endless Infinity is the debut of Austrian band Visions Of Atlantis in the music scene of melodic and gothic metal. After a short orchestral keyboard intro, the double bass drums begin to hammer, soprano Nicole Bogner starts to sing accompanied by heavy guitar riffs and orchestral keyboards. Her voice is alternated by the voice of Christian Stani. In the tracks that follow the double bass drums of drummer Thomas Caser are less dominating and not used in every track.

Vestal is a one man band from the USA. However, my attempts to find more information about this artist failed. All music was composed and for the most part performed by Thomas Vestal. No one less than producer Bob Katz was responsible for the mastering of Symbiosis. While listening to this album one can only sit back, letting the music take you away and leave you wondering why there are so many talented musicians around you haven't heard of!

This CD is a compilation consisting of excerpts from live recordings, made by six different French artists in the genre of electronic music. It’s a good way to present new artists to the public, but personally I don’t like samplers very much. Although slightly more jazzy the first artist Awen presents a piece in the vein of Klaus Schulze with a rather simple sequence and on top of that a lot of percussion and numerous effects and solos.

It’s been a while since Antares, the progressive metal band from Groningen (the Netherlands) released Chokin' The Stone. Antares is no more, but singer-songwriter and former lead guitarist Han Uil is alive and kickin' and Alone is proof of his abilities to write, play, sing and produce a couple of nice tunes. However, in spite of the help of some ex-members of Antares, there's no metal and hardly any progressive music in this offering.

Textures are a new and young band from the southern part of the Netherlands. They have released a self-produced album called Polars with eight original compositions in the techical thrash genre. The musicians are former members of Lost Sacrament and Ground Control. The album contains massive walls of guitar riffs by Jochem Jacobs and Bart Hennephof, of whom the latter is also responsible for the artwork.