This is my first exposure to this French project, and even though this kind of thing isn't always something I can appreciate, I'm generally quite into this. Basically it all comes down to the quality of the synth tones used, and thankfully in this case what I find to be the cheesier and less emotional side of things is kept rather subdued underneath orchestral layers of tones and tactful percussion. The percussion is actually highly effective, repetitive and driving behind the melodies. It seems this unit often gets tagged as neoclassical, which I can understand to the degree that a lot of the synth orchestrations have somewhat of a classical ring, but the percussion style here has much more of an industrial bent to it (nothing overpowering, but stylistically and aesthetically), and for whatever reason I don't necessarily think "classical" when I hear the melodies that carry the bulk of these compositions. I don't know what I'd call it, that classical element does play a large role, but I often find that classification to be misleading and almost repelling, and I don't want to turn away potential fans of this CD by hyping that label. Now, admittedly most of these songs are fairly similar to one another, and consistent in their persistence/apparent minimalism at that - perhaps you could call it mood music above all else, but I do find it to be rather flowing in its presentation... an enjoyable listen. One small complaint I have is that the tracks sometimes end rather abruptly, making little sense and feeling too sudden in relation to their repetitious and often hypnotic qualities. I also think more could've been done to provide a bit more variety from piece to piece, be it structurally or through more involved manipulation of synth tones, but other than that, and the aforementioned presence of the occasional synth patch that is indeed rather cheesy and ineffectual, I'd definitely state that the tracks utilizing percussion are stronger than those without (especially superbly laidback and more sinister cuts such as "Eldorado"), and all of my gripes are minimal. At the end of the disc are two remixes, the first by Gae Bolg which takes a more thumpy and dance-ish stance to the beats - not only clashing with the synths, but rubbing me the wrong way on its own as I'm just not into that sort of thing. Then the Cynfeirdd Chorus takes the final mix in a minimal sort of orchestral dark ambient direction, integrating a soft vocal sample into the mix (it works very well, but I was massively let down once I realized that it was from "Braveheart", which is sort of silly), for the most part standing more in line with Regard Extreme's approach (though darker and less musical on some level). Nice work there. The disc comes in a fairly nice digipack held back only by what I view as rather inefficient typeface choices, but I do enjoy most of the artwork, which consists of religious styled paintings and stone carvings. There's very little text aside from the tracklist, the most significant of which is an extremely tiny message that reads, "Friendship is nothing but unshared love, friendship is everything." Not bad. I like the bulk of it, and the final few tracks (not including the remixes) end on a very powerful note. It could be stronger, not to mention more succinct and focused, but I'm still pleased with it as a whole.
[Cynfeirdd]
Running time - 59:28, Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: Lorsque Fuient les Reves, Par-Dela les Ruines, Eldorado]
Regard Extreme - http://regardextreme.go.to
