From: davem@uvmark.uucp (Dave Meeks)
Newsgroups: alt.music.progressive
Subject: Meeks' Review #2 - Minimum Vital
Date: 28 Sep 92 21:00:47 GMT
Organization: VMark Software, Inc.


Hello again Net World...

Since to an amazing amount of positive feedback about my previous review,
I have decided to actually do another one.. Oh aren't you the happy campers
now:-)

Anyway, it was requested that I review Minimum Vital, so, I will do that one
next.

Minimum Vital is a French band once described as "The absolute monsters
of new French symphonic progressive.  Absolutely mindblowing."  Now,
while I won't go quite that far, I will say that these guys are great.

I picked up "Envol Triangles" and "Les Saisons Marines" on a single CD.
These are their first two albums.  The first is from 1985 and the other 
from 1987.  The first album featured:
	Jean Luc Payssan: guitars
	Thierry  Payssan: claviers
	Eric Rebeyrol   : bass
	Antoine Fillon  : drums
	Anne Colas	: flute
	Didier Lamarque : percussion

It consists of 5 songs, and here they are with a brief description:

Hydromel (4:48) -  Starts off with a pretty cool flute/guitar interchange,
	with some percussion/synth thrown in for good measure.  Very cool 
	song
Balivernes (6:58) - Again, nice flute usage with guitars and standard 
	rhtyhm.  Clav. kicks off in the middle. Very nice..
Envol Triangles (5:04) - starts off acoustically with flute.  Much quieter song
	than some of the others.  Gets into a Jazz tempo.  Much more clav. in
	this song than the others.  Less flute. 
Dans Le Doute (7:09) - another acoustic piece.  Starts off pretty slow and 
	mellow, then picks up with guitar and clav. interplay.  Kicks into a 
	heavy jam in the middle.  Again, hardly any flute.  Time changes start
	up pretty heavily at times.
Ronde (9:32) - final song.  WIth it's length they do some nice changes in tempo
	style and theme.  Flute comes back for some more nice work.  Starts 
	to get frantic in the middle, and is very cool.  Almost some work with
	creative dissonance at parts.

Overall, this first album is excellent.  Very guitar/flute oriented.  Drums
are nothing special, and mainly seem to keep the beat with lots of cymbal work.
Bass is ok, again not exceptional.  Guitar work is very, very good, and very
clean.  Not a lot of distortion, fuzz, feedback, hammer-ons, or any of that
jazz.  Just exceptional guitar work.   Flute is very well done on this album
and is part of the highlight, if you like flute, and still nice if you don't.
The keyboards are also very well done, if not for the fact that it is the same
sound throughout, for the most part.

Thus ends the first album.

The second album, Les Saisons Marines, is a little different.

It features a smaller lineup, with :
	Jean Luc Payssan: guitars
	Thierry  Payssan: claviers
	Eric Rebeyrol   : bass
	Christophe Godet: drums
	and Pascale Jakubowski - chants on "Lequel De Nous..."
Yes, that's right, the flutes are now gone.  

The songs are

1) Pour Le Temps Present (4:29)
	With the absense of flute, the album tends to get a little heavier in
	a way, with more emphasis on the guitar, and we are not disappointed,
	as the guitar work is great.  Also, a noticable improvement with this
	album was their drummer, who is a lot better.  
2) Zappata! (4:41) 
	Very jazzy, funky song with a funky bass and drum section and the 
	always present guitar work.  This song actually includes vocals.  Very
	unobtrusive however, and very short lived. 
3) Lequel De Nous... (1:58) 
	Very short song, starts off acoustically, includes some nice vocals
	(in French).  
4) La Tour Haute (10:03)
	Very nice song with clean guitar and clav leading the way.  Hard to
	really describe the song, as it goes through a large number of mood,
	tempo, and theme changes.
5) Les Saisons Marines (4:22)
	Strange song.  Mainly clav.  Not a lot about this song that I like, 
	though it isn't necessarily bad.  Just kind of blah...
6) A Bien Des Egards (6:48)
	This is more like it, as this is very frantic and upbeat, with both
	guitar and clav. going at it.  The middle of this song sounds a little
	like King Crimson/Robert Fripp.  Especially the guitar work.
7) Retour Au Domaine (5:25) - sounds like a great song,but my disk is flawed.
	Nice clav. riff going on with the other instruments filling in.  Has 
	a real jazzfusion feel to it.  Guitar picks up riff in the middle.
	Even has a vocal section, which is basically humming, and reminds me
	of George Benson.  In fact, the song itself could remind one of 
	something along those lines.  

Overall, this band compares very favorably against bands like Djam Karet, or
possibly even Robert Fripp in a strange way.  They tend to combine elements
of JazzFusion with Progressive music.  Someone called them "Symphonic" rock,
which I would take with a grain of salt, as they are not in my definition of
such.  They are not as musically diverse as some bands, and don't delve into
tons of different time changes and strange rhythms.  However, they appear to
be extremely competent at their crafts, and their is little to flaw with their
music.  They are a tight outfit, and they have a very jazzy feel. The guitar
and flute work is excellent, and the clav is not too bad either, though he
is no Emerson/Wakeman/Banks/etc... The drums are more or less their, and tend
to be rather repetitive, but not annoying.  The bass is occasionally very, very
good, though it tends to be very subdued.  

Anyway, thus ends my second review.  I apologize as this album was much harder
to review.  This is an album that does not have a lot of immediately 
remarkable things to talk about, but is a great album none the less.  Truly
an example of the sum is greater than the individual parts.  This one is 
a definite must for fans of great music.
-- 
David T. Meeks                    ||" We are jigsaw pieces, aligned on the 
VMark Software, Inc.              ||  perimeter edge, 
uvmark!davem@merk.com             ||  interlocked through a missing piece"
davem%uvmark@merk.com             ||" ...This world is totally Fugazi"