The debut album from this French band.
Kimura has obviously heard a lot on bands like Touchstones and Mostly Autumn. Not to mention the rest of the female fronted prog rock bands in England. It is in this scene we find this band. This despite of their nationality. They have also added a lot of those celtic elements which made the Kompendium album from last year such a great album.
In addition to the good female vocals, there are
also some good male vocals here. The vocals is sometimes delivered as
duets. There area also a very strong Irish sound here. Irish sound as
in The Corrs. The music is also rich of guitars and keyboards.
The end result is both a good and very sweet album which appeal to the masses and will make Mostly Autumn fans rejoice until Mostly Autumn release a new album. The music on Aleryon is not particular original or even great. Caroline Varlet delivers her English vocals with a noticeable French accent. That is the only thing that differentiate this album from the English albums in this genre.
Despite of being overly sweet and commercial, I find this a good album which a like. I will keep an eye on this band. I hope they ditch the Irish sound next time and switch their attention to their homeland France. There should be enough in France they can use instead of just copying the English bands. But this is still a good album.
3 points
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI'm the composer and frontman of Kimura, and I've just read this review. Thanks for listening to Aleryon.
Nevertheless, I wanted to post a comment to tell that I've never heard a single note of Touchstones or Mostly Autumn. I'm glad to know that my work sounds like well-established bands, but my influences are Genesis, Porcupine Tree, Marillion, Neal Morse, Nine Inch Nails, Jan Hammer, Yanni, Deep Forest and the great film music makers like Hans Zimmer and John Williams...
I didn't copy any English band as you say, this concept-album is the result of four years of work from scratch, based on the story we wrote. Call it a geek album influenced by sci-fi movies or video games (you can even quote Braveheart, 'cause this is the reason why I wanted to link the soldiers themes with a celtic music), but don't call it a copy of bands that I never knew before reading your review...
To finish with, I'm not really sure that accordion tunes will nicely fit in my musical universe, and the rest of French pop and rock music is mainly influenced by the English and American sound since the 60's... Just for information ;)
Best regards,
Deweak