“For a first album of FD it ain't bad with an EM pulled towards more New Age phases than pure progressive sequencer-based EM”
1 Intro / Endless Dream 6:36
2 Ocean Memories 4:10
3 Sierra De Monchique 4:42
4 Galaxy 2002 6:27
5 New Day 4:32
6 The Last Sunset 4:11
7 Wonderful Morning 4:44
8 Acoustic Nature 4:29
9 Ocean Memories Part 2 4:23
10 Home of my Heart 4:37
11 Experience 4:59
12 Space Night Drumming 5:42
13 Piece of Heaven 4:22
14 Land of Magic 4:30
(DDL 68:33) (V.F.)
(EM, New Age, Cosmic Rock)
Very first opus of German guitarist Frank Dorittke, ELECTRONIC DREAMS offers a very poetic musical approach, even embracing the paths of a New Age à la Yanni on honeyed and dreamy musical structures. A sweet album where his guitars are very silent, apart from Acoustic Nature, giving free rein to vaporous mist from synths which fill sweet dreamlike structures over rhythms much more lighter than dynamic.
Intro/Endless Dream begins this first work with a slow and dark procession with shards of prisms from which a drop of metallic water escapes into a sinister cosmic nothingness. A wind howls through the ornamental arches of a monasterial bell tower, activating the movement of the bells which resonate around delicate chords in order to draw a sober rhythm with nuanced hesitations. The rhythm which comes is articulated around a mesh between the ringing of arpeggios stolen from the stars that a keyboard hammers as heavily as the sober percussions. This soft rhythm is embellished with wooden hooves, clearly showing the intentions of F.D. Project to charm its audience with an approach that swings between electronic rock and good New Age.
Intro/Endless Dream becomes the kickoff of an album crammed of very accessible titles with catchy rhythms which slip between the ears without too much difficulty to tame. An album with light rhythms à la Jean-Michel Jarre and Yanni and sometimes with Celtic approaches from Enya and Mike Oldfield. The melodies are woven from threads of dreams and are just as sweet as the rhythms that waltz in a cosmos not too difficult to imagine either. There are beautiful little jewels of tenderness on this album, including New Day, The Last Sunset, Wonderful Morning and Land of Magic which bathe in a sweet musical ambience. Galaxy 2002 is the only title with a systematically electronic approach where a synth launches its solos among beautiful, gently frenetic sequences and a keyboard with the approach of symphonic rock.
For a first album, ELECTRONIC DREAMS is not bad. Rather, it is a beautiful album crammed with titles as romantic as dreamlike whose slow and elegant waltzing synth pads barely move it away from an approach more New Age than progressive and electronic. The kind of album that you can listen to love in your eyes and in your head!
Sylvain Lupari (February 2nd, 2010) *****
Available at FD Project Bandcamp