MUST (E)

Serge Keravel is a French-Canadian multi-instrumentalist, born from a French father and an Italian mother. Influenced by artists like Keith Jarett and Joni Mitchell and admiring artists like Peter Gabriel and Björk he began to explore music at a young age. Must is his third effort consisting of relaxing, instrumental music. By using electronics for effects, percussion and drum sounds a musician like Keravel gets the opportunity to do everything himself. However, the hazard is that the overall sound becomes unnatural and thin. With the help of Pierre Messler, Keravel managed to reduce this hazard of possibly unnatural sounding drums to an absolute minimum. Throughout the album one can appreciate that Keravel is primarily a keyboard player. Most of the orchestrations, accompaniment, solos and bass sounds come from keyboards. Just like Derek Sherinian (Planet X, ex-Dream Theater) he sometimes likes to use his keyboards to mimic the sound of a guitar, but he also uses sounds of a flute or any other instrument to keep the listener’s attention focused. In the first track you'll hear some haunting sounds and then the electronic drums come pounding in. Moreover, multiple keyboard layers and the melodies played by different sounding synths, all in a rather slow rhythm. In War Dogs the sounds of a aeroplane can be heard, then some synths, drums and the piano as the predominant accompanying instrument. All melodies are friendly, catchy but never aggressive. Love Me contains almost new age music. It's a lovely theme but the percussion and drums sounds make the track resemble one of the many by the German outfit Enigma. Some slow jazz influences, like in the earlier work of Gino Vannelli can be distinguished in Walk With Us, the lead melody played by synths with sounds like ‘classic synth meets organ’ and in the second part a more guitar like sound. It is followed by another lovely melodic tune with some oriental flavours. The music sometimes reminds me of teh early works by Yanni. The same kind of atmosphere, slow dance music, as in Dancing Fantasy we hear in Seven Clouds, smooth and soft melodies with subtle piano playing. Another name that pops up when I hear this music is the Spanish electronic musician Psycodreamics also known as Salva Moreno. Stranger's Beat has a firmer rhythm and the organ in the second part gives the music a slightly harder rocking edge, but everything within the limits of pleasant, joyful music. Flutes open a new age oriented track called A Wish Or Two, mainly soft, smooth jazzy music featuring piano, acoustic guitar sounds and a nice synth-bass. More rhythmic sound and a piano can be heard in Bounced Off with all kinds of orchestrations and organ as accompaniment, and a cello as solo-instrument. The melancholy of the late Pete Bardens (Camel) can be heard in Soul Mates but the lead instrument is a slightly distorted synth, just a little bit sounding as a muffled guitar. The bass sounds in For Keeps show even more jazz influences because they sound like a fretless bass. Again the piano in the centre with smooth groovy rhythm patterns. Sometimes these synth sounds resemble the very distinctive sounds by Jan Hammer as he used to play them in for example Miami Vice. Do I Know You is basically variations on two chords, expanded with another two in the ‘choruses’. Simple but very nice, and Keravel uses an accordion sound here. Slightly more up-tempo is the track Rumbling with a lot of percussion going on, bass sounds and subtle pipe organ as lead instrument. New age meets soft jazz again in Mysterious Aanalogies, nice but nothing special. The final track is called Blue Agenda. Once more the name of Yanni pops up, but the difference here is the piano that Keravel uses much more than the Greek American. A nice more up-tempo finale to an album I’ve enjoyed listening to very much.

The compositions tend to be quite straightforward and rather simple in origin although much attention is given to details and most of the music is orchestrated and arranged extremely nicely. I do miss some tension in the music however or a melody that keeps running in my mind forever. Furthermore I would not call this kind of music progressive rock, but I would rather characterize it as ‘instrumental electronic music with a progressive edge’. Serge Keravel did a very nice job on Must and if you want to relax, but don’t want to fall asleep, this kind of music would be perfect, also very suitable to listen to this music as a concentrated listener because of the many little details: it’s a journey full of discoveries.