I admit it, I've never really followed the singer and multi-instrumentalist 'Franck Carducci' (no one is perfect!) and it's often in the case of a live release that I discover artists who fit into my (already very long) list of progressive rock must-haves. So I can now add this Frenchman who, in just over ten years, has released four albums, the last of which 'Naked' is from March 2023 and was an acoustic recording in collaboration with singer 'Mary Raynaud' and in which 'Laura Cox' had been invited. On the electrical side, the three studio recordings are, 'Oddity' from 2011, 'Torn Apart' from 2015 and 'The Answer' from 2019.
We find in this live, recorded at the 'Poppodium Boerderij' in Zoetermeer in the Netherlands in September 2022, a kind of French best of including a clever mix of progressive with long developments and some more direct compositions. In terms of influences, it's a multitude of names that came to mind listening to this live: I will mention pell-mell, 'Genesis', 'Pink-Floyd', 'Renaissance', 'David Bowie', 'Yes' or even 'Deep Purple', that is to say that beautiful people and I certainly pass. In terms of direct compositions, we can cite the short version of 'A Brief Tale Of Time' (whose original version exceeds 12 minutes), the magnificent ballad 'Beautiful Night' and the very energetic rocks 'Torn Apart', 'Slave to Rock 'n' Roll' and 'Mr Hyde & Dr. Jekyll'.
But the majority of the other titles take us into progressive compositions in which we find all the ingredients that any amateur of this style is looking for: at the outset, '(Love Is) The Answer' takes us into a beautiful acoustic introduction with harmonies vocals reminiscent of 'Renaissance' and the suite modulates different intensities including this marvelous very soft passage with layers of aerial keyboards, then 'Closer to Irreversible' offers us a marvelous sensual blues/rock (the vocals of 'Mary Raynaud' in the introduction being simply sublime and the guitar solo of 'Barth Sky' having nothing to envy to that of 'Steve Hackett' of the original version) and 'The Betrayal Of Blue' is a pure moment of progressive happiness which takes us through a fantastic rock sound labyrinth with this introduction reminiscent of 'David Bowie' and and this wonderful 'Floydienne' section in the second part of the title highlighting a magnificent theremin solo performed by 'Mary Raynaud'. I'm also thrilled with 'The Angel' which is a ballad in which the vocal 'Mary Reynaud' takes the emotional slider up a few notches, especially as the final 'Floydien' guitar solo rocks us delicately. In the radius of the long developments, the last two compositions 'Alice's Eerie Dream' and 'Asylum' add two progressive jewels, the first taking us straight back to a subtle mixture of direct blues/rock mixed with a certain album 'Animals' from the ' Floyds' dating from 1977 in the instrumental parts and the second rather reminiscent by its introduction of the best of Mister 'Christian Décamps' and which continues in a patchwork of different atmospheres alternating energetic blues / rock with much quieter sections of all beauty. It must also be said that 'Franck Carducci' is well surrounded because each artist brings his stone to the building: the vocal arrangements are magnificent with of course this richness of register between Franck and Mary, the guitar solos of 'Barth Sky' are phenomenal (listen to that of 'The Betrayal Blue at 5.12), the Hammond sounds of keyboardist 'Cedric Selze' take us back to the best of the 70s and 'Léa Fernandez' accompanies all this little world with the hands of a master! We are necessarily thrilled and it must be added that this album benefits from an irreproachable production!
In summary, this live of 'Franck Carducci' with his 'Fantastic Squad' is a pure delight made of a perfect mix between good direct rock and progressive bringing us back to the best of this style and there would be in preparation a DVD/Blu-Ray that I am impatiently awaiting in order to be able to benefit from this live atmosphere even more intensely, especially since the few excerpts that we can have on the internet show that it is not only a music concert but a full show... | |
