01	Pour le temps present						05:28
	02	Zapata I						04:54
	03	Song a cinq						06:34
	04	La maldita						03:30
	05	Sarabande 1						07:13
	06	Ronde						10:13
	07	Au cercle de pierre, j'ai danse						09:03
	08	Ce qui soustient...						02:42
	09	Esprit d'amor						06:52
	10	Le dernier appel de la guerre						05:49

Minimum Vital - Au Cercle de Pierre

Released: 1998
Label: Musea
Cat. No.: FGBG 4229 AR
Total Time: 60:12


Reviewed by: Stephanie Sollow, September 1999
A live release from one of my favorite bands, and a great one at that. From the moment the first track begins, "Pour Le Temps Present" you know that they were on this night. The sound is clear and well mixed, audience sounds only appear between tracks ... which does give this less a live feel than a more natural sounding recording. Or maybe European audiences aren't as rowdy as American audiences. Well, listening to the ovation they get after track 7, that's not a true statement. Maybe a more attentive audience on the Euro side. [My subsequent festival experiences tell me that the rowdiness is more a thing for pop audiences rather than prog audiences, and is probably not exclusive to any one country].

However or whichever, this is a very clean recording. I'm too distracted by listening to this disk to do much writing about it - it and they are that good and that involving. Jean Luc Payssan's guitar playing here is magical, Sonia Nedelec vocals are light, soft and warm, and though she sings in the upper ranges, she is far from shrill. I think of her as a melding of Marilyn McCoo and Sarah Brightman ... if they were [to sing in] French. Lovely vocals.

The other vocalist here is Jean Baptiste Ferracci, who has a great voice, a perfect complement to Nedelec's. And I don't want to overlook the spectacular keyboards of Theirry Payssan, the drums of Charly Berna, or the bass of Eric Rebeyrol.

I mentioned in my review of Esprit D'Amor that I had been hoping for English translation of the lyrics - I find that still true, but I don't know if this would be as effective if they were sung in English. There is such an natural musical quality to French (to Italian and the other romance languages as well) ... that English and other Germanic languages do not have [in my opinion].

The closing track is a studio track, previously unreleased, entitled "Le Dernier Appel De La Guerre." This starts out as an acoustic guitar led track that made me think of several different artists - Acoustic Alchemy, Craig Chaquico, Paul Speer...and when you add in sax, there's a bit of Rippingtons sound here. Now, I don't suspect that any of these artists provided any influence, but as close to jazz as Minimum Vital got on their earlier disks, this probably comes even closer. Because of the direction they wanted to take with Esprit, this instrumental track was left off - it is an excellent track.

This is an enhanced CD, containing live footage of some tracks, biography, discography...and more.

Recommended.

More about Au Cercle De Pierre:

Track Listing: Pour le Temps Present (5:29) / Zapata! (4:53) / Song A Cinq (6:34) / La Maldita (3:30) / Sarabande No. 1 (7:07) / Ronde (10:11) / Au Cercle De Pierre, J'ai Danse (9:05) / Ce Qui Soustient... (2:40) / Esprit D'Amor (6:53) / Le Dernier Appel de la Guerre (5:44)

Musicians:
Jean-Luc Payssan - guitars and backing vocals
Thierry Payssan - keyboars and backing vocals
Eric Rebeyrol - bass
Sonia Nedelec - lead vocals
Jean-Baptiste Ferracci - lead vocals
Charly Berna - drums
Peter Acock - saxophone (#10)

Contact:
Vital Musique
13 Rue G. Clemenceau
33130 Begles
France

Discography

Envol Triangles/Les Saisons Marines (1985/1987)
Sarabandes (1990)
La Source (1993)
Esprit d'Amor (1997)
Au Cercle de Pierre (1998)




Vital Duo [France]
Updated 9/28/01
Discography
Ex Tempore (01)


Reviews
Vital Duo - Jean-Luc Payssan (bass, electric & classical guitars, mandolin, 16-string cithern, vocals, drums, percussion & tambourine) and Thierry Payssan - (keyboards, sampler, percussion, vocals)

The very, very talented Payssan brothers were co-founders and the main masterminds of Minimum Vital. While the Minimum Vital band just cannot exist without them - at all, in general, etc, - to me, a new album by their new ProGject Vital Duo (I like this name much more than Minimum Vital) is just a continuation of the Payssan brothers' discography - no matter under which name - of their band or project. In guess, everything created by this brother duo is a high-quality musical production, though I've heard only few Minimum Vital albums. Even their quite poppy Esprit d'amour I consider a unique work in general and a real masterpiece of Neo Progressive in particular.

It would be useless just to describe compositions one after another in case of Ex Tempore. Personally, I can't perceive this album any other way but as a complete work. This one in some ways reminds me very much of a picture by some brilliant medieval (yet modernistic at the same time) painter. It's impossible to reproduce the impression of the picture just enumerating each its stroke and describe it in detail (it's possible only in the stroke books, no?). Vital Duo's Ex Tempore is, perhaps, really a vital album for the contemporary progressive scene thanks to its unique, distinctly innovative contents representing a brave approach to mixing the medieval and contemporary (Rock) forms of music. It must be said, however, that the blend of medieval and contemporary Progressive Rock sounds on the album lesser than a typical medieval-alike music. Despite the fact that there is the only real medieval instrument (old lyre) in the duo's equipment the music on Ex Tempore is filled with an obvious medieval spirit and I just wonder how masterly the Payssan brothers manage to elicit a wide variety of old sounds from the arsenal of modern instruments. Jean-Luc is a wonderful musician. I didn't know that he is a real multi-instrumentalist. Some of the pieces are in the same medieval vein, only performed to the accompaniment of a rhythm-section, they sound just amazing. Jean-Luc's drumming is not only something outstanding - it's especially impressive exactly in the medieval structures. When he does all these most unusual breaks he feels the spirit surrounding him at the moment so fine as if he'd previously lived several centuries ago. There also are few pieces with almost clear contemporary Progressive Rock sound on Ex Tempore, but all the "additional" colours have the same medieval feel which actually is more than just typical for the album as a whole. Several compositions contain either short yet loud tunes of some choral prayers or incantations, wonderful exactly in their monotony, or large-scale songs. While the first of them, as I think, were spoken and sung in Latin, the second ones were sung in French. Of course, all kinds of singing on the album have obviously that medieval character. Though the digital church organ's sound isn't all that similar to the real church organ, all its scores played by Thierry always help to disregard these minor differences. As for Thierry's Grand Piano parts they sound as classically as centuries ago. (In this case I'd like to thank myself for some attentive listens to contemporary pianists played the music of past centuries.)

Thinking of Vital Duo's Ex Tempore as just of a kind of music that some other present and past progressive artists have used in their works too, I don't find an effort to perform medieval music too innovative, generally. I've heard no less than a dozen albums whose musical structures at least partly contain some medieval components (beginning with Gryphon's first and third albums). Meanwhile, I can't compare Ex Tempore to any of the albums I mean. Plus, bearing in mind that Gryphon on their first album performed not their own, but original medieval pieces, I have to admit that I've never heard anything at least a bit similar to this album of Vital Duo. Thus, if this work isn't totally innovative, then it's incredibly original and even unique. That's for sure, though. Not extremely complex, Ex Tempore is, however, slightly more than just moderately complex progressive music. So I don't think most of the Neo-heads will like this album. -- Vitaly Menshikov