One of the most original groups to emerge on the Canadian music scene, Forestare guitar ensemble returns with Douze guitares Paris, a tribute to French music that is as unique as the ensemble's boundary-pushing vision. Works by Impressionist masters Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel share the program with compositions by contemporary guitarists Roland Dyens and Arnaud Dumond.
A very eclectic mix pulling in influences from Dream Theater, Rush, Saga, through It Bites, and Pink Floyd. The band set about recording their debut album "Our Time On Earth" which was subsequently released through Escape Music (ESM 342) in 2020 to great acclaim by the music press and fans of both the Melodic Rock and Metal genres. Gathering multiple 10's and 100% reviews, Steve's vision, and indeed the rest of the band's was successfully realised in creating a bridge between these two genres of music. One of the greatest compliments being that the songs could not be placed into one specific category.
Here we have Canadian musician Rick Miller back with his sixteenth studio album, for which he has kept the same line-up as he had for 2020's "Unstuck In Time".
Pink Floyd has always been an influence, but there is also much on here that one could relate back to early Barclay James Harvest while Alan Parsons Project is also involved somewhere along the line. Miller is crossover in its truest sense in that he has no boundaries and instead goes where ethe muse takes him, so we can be symphonic in some places and folk in others, always with his emotional and haunting vocals bringing the listener deep inside. While many of his influences do reach back in time, this never feels like an album from nearly 50 years ago but instead is fresh and new.
‘Utopian Tales’ offers strange yet beautiful soundscapes inspired by microtonality – the little gaps between the notes. Just as the rigid divisions of the well-tempered scale in Western music mirrored hierarchical structures in society at large, so microtonal music, which uses intervals smaller than a semi-tone, can be reflective of a freer and more fluid social order…