Short Reviews [ Chance - 2000 - "Escape To Horizon" ]

This is the debut album by French Solo Pilot Laurent Simmonent, who uses CHANCE as a vehicle for his project. He handles all instruments (keyboards, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, drum-programming) on "Escape To Horizon". Musically, this is quite an original blend of classic Symphonic Progressive and space music (not Space-Rock), though, fortunately, there are less episodes of the latter style on the album than symphonic arrangements. Unlike almost all of the other works of Solo Pilots to Prog, with whose creations I am acquainted, Chance's "Escape To Horizon", despite the fact there are lots of guitar solos, sounds like your typical keyboard based all instrumental album. Jeremy's "Salt the Planet" album is also mostly keyboard based, but unlike this one as well as some other one-man band creations (at least the aforementioned ones), Laurent's "Escape To Horizon" has a lot of arrangements that are really fast (which isn't typical of music Solo Pilots normally perform). Although the level of complexity of Chance's music is practically the same as on the albums of the said performers, I wouldn't recommend it to fans of Jean-Michel Jarre and suchlikes artists to find an easy "Escape" beyond this "Horizon", though for some folks who are into modern spacey music, ambient and new-age, it could be a good stage for further development of their interest to more complex musical forms.

Vitaly Menshikov: November 21, 2002