Arachnoid – Arachnoid

I bought this Replica Records reissue new and sealed, and had to return it to the store and get reimbursed. Side 1 had some sticky stuff on the first track (dried glue?), and loud static and scratchy sounds throughout Side 1, slightly less on Side 2. Cleaning the record helped a little in reducing the noise, but the seller acknowledged that overall this was not acceptable, also showing me how the surface of the disc was visually irregular, indication of a poorly pressed copy...
I cannot tell if this problem is to be expected on all copies of this limited reissue, but better be warned.

The french lyrics are crazy, drugs for everybody...a great record !

A great one-shot French prog rock band. Hard to believe you can still find great prog released as late as 1979, but there you go. There were a few musicians after 1977 who didn't want to go along with what new trend or fad came along the pike. This album appeared on the Divox International label, and is very hard to come by, as an original, so you're best bet is to get the reissue on Musea. It's not hard to understand why this would end up on Musea, as it's in the style of several French groups Musea had reissued, like Shylock, Pulsar and Carpe Diem. Other groups that bring to mind include King Crimson and Artcane (the latter being the perfect band for Musea to reissue, but they can't wrestle it out of the grasp of Philips, or Universal Music Group, or whoever owns the Philips music catalog these days), and even the 1990s Quebecois band Pangée springs to mind, even if they didn't exist in 1979. This is prog that does not play it safe. Lots of guitar, many of it in that fuzz nature that's similar to Pulsar, with spacy synths and even nice use of Mellotron. Vocals are in French, in that theatrical style, but are not dominant. The music is challenging, and I'm glad to see a group still try this so late in the game (when most groups had fallen by the wayside somewhere between 1975 and 1977). The average Marillion or Spock's Beard fan is certain to come running and screaming for the hills, but for the more adventurous prog fan out there, you can't go wrong! It's totally essential, and one of the best prog albums post-1977 I've heard.

Since I do own the super-rare original LP, I noticed a slight difference in the opening cut, "Le Chamadere" from the Musea reissue. On the original LP, there's a section where the spacy synth kicks in, right before you hear a girl speak something in French, I notice some vocal "ah" type chorus included with that phased organ, and on the reissue, those "ah" voices sounded like they were removed and you can only hear the keyboards. Seemed like Musea had did some minor remixing. At least it's nowhere as drastic as what they did to Neuschwanstein's Battlement, where the reissue ended up having a more 1980s sound than the original LP (I own the original LP and I have heard the reissue).