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5BridgeS originates from the Netherlands. They have been working together with their current line-up for about three years now. The band name refers to the extensive catalogue of Keith Emerson and the five-piece outfit tries to ‘cross a bridge’, reaching out for the sounds of the seventies, wherein truly crafty musicians were still allowed to sound genuinely, passionately warm and a bit rough on the edges. 5BridgeS uses keyboards including MiniMoog, Hammond organ and Taurus pedals.

Na het onverwachte succes van Concerto For Group & Orchestra (1969), geschreven door toetsenist Jon Lord en uitgevoerd door Deep Purple en het Royal Philharmonic Orchestra onder leiding van dirigent Malcolm Arnold, kreeg Lord het verzoek om een opvolger te schrijven. Dat werd Gemini Suite (1971), een album dat stijltechnisch niet wezenlijk verschilt van eerder genoemd album. Deze plaat bestaat uit zes delen, waarbij in elk stuk een instrumentalist de hoofdrol vertolkt.

Under the moniker of AstroVoyager the French electronic musician Philippe Fagnoni uses keyboards and synthesizers to create his music in the vein of celebrities like the Greek Vangelis and his countryman Jean Michel Jarre. Temporal Gravitation contains nice melodies, sometimes cosmic, at other times more symphonic. The fifteen relatively short tracks take the listener on a journey through space.

AstroVoyager is the moniker of the French electronic musician (EM) Philippe Fagnoni. Symphotronic Lunation is a much bigger project than his his first full-length album Temporal Gravitation. Inspired by the journey of the famous American spaceship Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong, Fagnoni decided to compose his music as a soundtrack and he ended up by finding Eric Parisi, the right man to make a film. It’s not clear to me why a renowned company like Musea send promos like this one to the press.

Aspera are five musicians hailing from Skien, Norway. They are active as a band since 2005 though in a slightly different line-up than in their schooldays. All members were about nineteen years of age when they conceived this album, which is quite remarkable. Although one can hear a great variety of influences, some of these guys must have listened to or have been inspired by bands like Pain Of Salvation, Pagan's Mind, Stratovarius and Symphony X.

The French band Aside Beside is a new name in the progressive rock scene. According to the accompanying flyer, the band have used mostly Steve Hackett and Tony Banks (both ex-Genesis) as sources for their inspiration. Furthermore names like Andy Latimer (Camel), Pulsar and Spock’s Beard were mentioned. While listening to the album I certainly came to the conclusion that Aside Beside did their homework well.

Not many people would have anticipated that Asia in the original line-up would get back together again after some 25 years and even less that they would continue to play live and producing new albums of a high quality.

Since Asia joined Inside Out, the record label decided to release previous albums as remastered editions with bonus material. Aria, from 1994, with its beautiful cover by Roger Dean, is one of their melodic and very catchy AOR-albums. The sound quality is slightly enhanced - and therefore amazingly clear - and this cd contains three bonus tracks: Reality, a typical melodic Asia-track that was already available on Archives I, an acoustic version of Military Man and Anytime as a multimedia video.

Arena is again a remastered special edition from the back catalogue of Asia. The album features two bonustracks: the acousticTwo Sides Of The Moon and That Season which is also available on Archives II. The latter song is well-worth of being put on this album since it's in the same laidback and mellow style. As could be expected, the sound quality is superb. The line-up for this album was somewhat exceptional because there were three guys playing the guitar: Aziz Ibrahim, Elliott Randall and Hotei Tomayasu.

To my knowledge, New Discovery is the sixth album by Artension, the all star band featuring the voice of John West (Royal Hunt), virtuoso keyboardist Vitalij Kuprij (solo, ex-Ring Of Fire), co-founder Roger Staffelbach (guitars) and Mike Terrana (Axel Rudi Pell, Rage) on drums and Kevin Chown (Magnitude 9, Tiles) on bass. What's new? Nothing really, it resembles the previous albums like Sacred Pathways very much.