“A very good selection of 14 tracks slightly redone with a new vivacity in tones and beats that should appeal to fans of a good EM Synth-pop style”
1 Message from Me 4:38 2 Echoes from the Past 5:18 3 Remembrance 4:42 4 Electronic Secrets Part IV 4:42 5 Memory Shift 5:19 6 Electronic Secrets Part I 6:38 7 Crying 4:26 8 Promethium 4:56 9 Message to Poland 3:46 10 Ripples 4:31 11 Iceman’s Melody 4:12 12 Ice Tunes 5:11 13 Heart and Soul 5:38 14 Message to You 4:26
(CD/DDL 67:39) (V.F.)
(Jarre Synth-Pop style)
Glenn Main is quite a showman! An entertainer as we say, who knows how to entertain his public during a show with a judicious choice of titles. He reproduces not only the musical genre of his idol, he also wants to make a good show like Jean-Michel Jarre with what he has in hand. LIVE IN DORTMUND was recorded during a concert at Kulturkirche in Dortmund (Germany) on February 6th 2015 and proposes a very nice collection of 14 titles comprised in Glenn Main's discography. From Electronic Secret to Into the Blue, which was to be released some 4 months farther, the music is played with a more current touch, Electronic Secret having been on the market in 2008, and especially a refreshment at the level of sequences and with a rhythmic more accurate for a music performed in concert. It's accompanied of his son, Nickolas Main, that the Norwegian synthesist scrolls a series of tracks which gives us the taste to move the hips if not to dance slightly. There are no moments of ambient moods here but some very melancholic ballads which are well inserted here and there, giving a second breath to a rhythmic vision which remains lively in its genre of Jarre electronic synth-pop. We feel the influences of the latter quite everywhere, in particular from the albums Oxygene, Magnetic Fields and Revolutions and these percussions which ring like blows of hammer on an anvil. What's interesting is that the titles are not an exact copy of what we hear on the studio albums. The skeleton remains the same, but the structure of the effects and of the harmonies, in some places, is a bit different whereas the rhythm is returned with more strength and with more vivacity in the sequences in other places, particularly during the last 4 tracks where Torsten Abel joins the Main duet.
I am not really a follower of Glenn Main music. I think that he tries too much to imitate Jean Michel Jarre and when he arrives there, that always gives me the taste to listen the music of Jarre. But he has known how to create, in the course of his discography, titles which hang on and also to get loose from the imitator etiquette in order to give us a very good album in Into the Blue which aims to be more personal. Thus, the collection of 14 titles of LIVE IN DORTMUND is created to please a public who likes the commercial hits of Jarre. A music which hangs onto our feet with good rhythms and good melodies. It's very enjoyable to listen to and the updating of tracks from Electronic Secret and Message gives a good energetic dose to the titles selected on these 2 albums. Initially, the album was to be named The Live Best of … And it's exactly what we have here.
Sylvain Lupari (July 20th, 2017) ***½**
Available at AD Music