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Artist: Hauteville |
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Hauteville are a French band that are set to take the progressive rock world by storm if this latest release on Lion Music is anything to go by. The band are fronted by Lydie Gosselin who’s haunting vocals gives the band and edge over many of the male fronted bands in the genre. The majority of the album is based upon the writings of Franck Botten, with the exception of a couple of tracks written by guitarist Denis Turmel that deal with some of today’s social issues. The album also boast one cover, the Dalbello track 'Immaculate Eyes'. The album covers many different musical styles while still retaining that progressive edge and opens up with a couple of heavier progressive tracks. Firstly ‘Monster (the race)’, which is a great way to open up any album and with the vocals of Gosselin driving the band it's plain for all to hear that this could be the breakthrough album for the band. The second of the heavier tracks ‘From Adam to Atom’, another great track with those vocals bringing the best out in the song and the guitar and keyboard section at the end of the track are great and lead well into the more gentle aspect of the bands repertoire. The first of the more thought provoking tracks is ‘Perfecablism’, a track that covers the touchy subject of Bioethics, and as the track evolves the keyboards take a more dominant role in the songs overall sound with the guitars taking a backseat. The Dalbello track ‘Immaculate Eyes’ has been re-arranged by the band into a power ballad and once again brings the keyboards to the forefront and is almost a duet between them and the vocals of Gosselin. ‘Like Anybody Hellse’ is probably the most commercial sounding track on the album with its gentle vocals and even gentler guitars. But the commercialism of the band is set aside as the political side of the band surfaces with ‘The Perfect Lens’, a track that draws its influences from the Bang Bang Club, a group of four photographers who were covering the last bloody days of the South African apartheid and how they were torn between their job and their will to step into the conflicts they were there to document. Intense subject matter to bring to song, but the band do them justice with a mellow yet strong song. Next is the title track ‘Relief Data Incomplete’, which once again highlights the great vocal talent of Lydie Gosselin. The pace picks up a little with ‘Jaywalker’, a track that can only be described as marvellous beyond belief as it just oozes class from the first note to the last. What could follow such a great track well simply another one, ‘Reflection’ is all about unbalanced relationships and is a track that builds from humble beginnings into a crescendo of emotions brought to you not only by the vocals of Gosselin but by the musicianship of the rest of the band. The
album closes in fantastic style with the instrumental ‘There Be
Dragons’ a finishes of a fantastic album of modern progressive rock
that any band in the genre would be proud of. |
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Tracklisting: |
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