CD

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.

For most fans of progressive and symphonic rock, The Alan Parsons Project (APP) must have been an enlightened name. The producer of Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd is a legend in this genre. When after ten studio albums the band seemed to have ended and singer Eric Woolfson decided to try his luck with musicals, it was quiet for about six years. Until 1993, when Alan Parsons came 'out of nowhere' with the release of Try Anyting Once and he began to take his project on the road.

Airbag hails from Norway. The current line-up consists of Asle Tostrup (lead vocals), Bjørn Riis (guitars & vocals), Jørgen Hagen (keyboards), Anders Hovdan (bass) and Joachim Slikker (drums). Identity is their debut album after releasing two EP's. The band played with Pineapple Thief, Riverside and Gazpacho and has an extraordinary liveshow with an extensive use of backdrop films.