| CD REVIEW Jupiter VI |
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Band : Jupiter VI As mentioned in the recently delivered review of the re-issue of Deliverance’s 1994 River Disturbance album, this is a new band started by that band’s frontman Jimmy P. Brown II, allying in this new venture with guitarist/ backing singer Helmut Stegel, piano & keyboard player Darby Flowers, bassist/ guitarist Remedios Innocentes, and drummer Spirios Filios. Sharing producing credits with Brown, now renamed Peter Braun for some mysterious reason, is his Fearful Symmetry mate Corin Jae Scott. As one might possibly derive from the album’s title, Back From Mars concentrates a little more on Brown/ Braun’s uncanny vocal capacity to emulate that of David Bowie, and although not being conceptual in nature, there’s a couple of other songs with a certain fascination for space (just like Bowie in his beginning years, you know!). Apparently, Jupiter VI is to be the band with which Brown goes back to his Classic Rock roots, re-discovering the great sounds of ‘70s and ‘80s Glam/ Space Rock...combining it with the Alternative Rock sounds of today. A funny thing: while listening to the aforementioned Deliverance album, you’ll find Brown using the sentence “Back from Mars” at a certain moment...so you can understand that the man’s fascination with the spacial things is not exactly a new thing! The album opens with the two more energetic tracks “Back From Mars” and “The Human Endeavor” [which stylistically remind me a lot of the solo works of Canadian singer/ guitarist Kim Mitchell (formerly of Max Webster)...but with a Bowie twist in the vocals] before doing the semi-acoustic ballad “Mimes XIII.II”. Although you’ll find more calmer tracks on the album (“Passions”, “Brand New Day”) the semi-acoustic thing only returns with “Lucidia”. The calmer songs bringing nice resting points in an otherwize rather energetic album! In a further homage to his Classic Rock roots, Brown decided to cover “All Day And All Of The Night” from TheKinks, and “Through The Speakers” from DanielAmos(whose 1986 album Fearful Symmetry was most certainly the inspiration of Brown thus calling his Electro-Industrial outing). Album closing “Zurich Von Mars” is a German version of the the album opening title track, made especially to express Brown’s gratitude towards his fans from that country! According to the info sheet I got along with the promo copy of this album, several former members of Deliverance (including George Ochoa who’d worked with him on the Weapons Of Our Warfare album), but the booklet of the album gives no indications of such feats! Another thing the info sheet dares to claim, is that Jupiter VI should appeal to fans of Classic Rock (especially Space/ Glam/ Alternative Rock), and people into the Strokes, The Killers, She Wants Revenge or...of course, David Bowie! To get a whiff of the songs on this album, I cannot this time direct you to myspace.com/backfrommars (where you will only find mp3-samples of 6 songs off the band’s forthcoming – or just recently released – album A Message From Home, including covers of Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” and Rod McKuen‘s “Amsterdam”; Still, there’s also a live version of BFM’s “The Human Endeavor”). In stead, I’ve found you 2-minutes samples of àll songs on BFM via cdbaby.com/cd/jupitervi...enjoy! Personally, I can’t wait for Music Buy Music to also distribute the band’s sophomore album over here in Europe! Having been a teenager in the ‘70s, you might understand I have a close relationship with this kind of quality Classic Rock mister Brown brings us? Actually, I like THIS even more than his more Metal-geared Deliverance stuff! 95/100 Tony. |