TRACK LIST:

1.  En Avant Doute 3:02
2.  Laisse Courir 5:11
3.  Le Repas de l'Orge 5:07
4.  Capitaine Coeur de Miel-II 5:03
5.  La Valse a Cent Ans 4:20
6.  Film d'Aurore 4:26
7.  Ouest Ferne 3:32
8.  L'Arbre 4:18
9.  Cassiopee 6:36

LINEUP:

Dominic Leonetti - vocals; ac. guitar
Claude Leonetti - Leode
Gederic Byar - el. guitar
Sylvan Bayol - Warr guitar; Stick
Yohan Simeon - drums, metallophone
Frederik Juan - vibraphones, percussion 

Analysis. There are no keyboards in Lazuli's instrumentation, and yet those seem to be present on quite a few of the disc's nine songs (no instrumentals here). So I assume some of the band members occasionally use either MIDI devices or guitar synthesizers - unless the possibilities of up-to-date Sticks allow their players to reproduce the sounds of different instruments without any subsidiary equipments. Just listen to lush string arrangements on each of the first two tracks, the title number and Laisse Courir, whose presence here, though, is the only significant matter distinguishing these from their (lacking a better term) brothers in style, namely Film d'Aurore, Le Repas de l'Orge, Capitaine Coeur de Miel-II and Cassiopee. Each of the said six tunes begins very gently, having usually only vocals, acoustic guitar and Leode in its introductory theme, which is in all cases followed by the band's joint playing with an alternation of ballad-like with both hard and dynamic arrangements, where the former are still often performed without drums, but feature other percussive instruments, e.g. vibraphone, congas, etc. From this it follows that precisely two thirds of the tracks here resemble each other architectonically and in their construction alike or, in other words, all are created upon a very similar compositional scenario, due to which I find the material to be sounding somewhat samey on the one hand, whilst on the other I am much pleased by the fact that Lazuli play in a style which is totally their own, perhaps just seeing no reason to transgress its bounds. Back to the aforesaid songs: each of them is a combination of Alternative Rock, World Music and Gothic Metal, but while the music is only prog-tinged, its exceptional uniqueness is just striking, besides which it possesses a certain hypnotic power. Under such circumstances, I always regret I am not a polyglot, because it's clear the lyrics are one of the most important components of Lazuli's work (perhaps the most important one, as they bear a literal information), while in English the booklet features only brief hints of what each song is about, but no translated lyrics themselves. La Valse a Cent Ans and Ouest Ferne are both kind of fragile ballads, performed without drums or any power percussion either. Free of any heaviness on the one hand and imbued with colorations belonging to Celtic, Breton and even Middle East music on the other, L'Arbre draws something halfway between Folk Rock and World Music (the sounds of bagpipe, flute and other wind instruments being clearly heard in places), and yet almost perfectly blends with the album's prevalent picture as well. There are some instrumental interludes to be found on each of the nine songs, though at least basically, most of those just continue the same musical storyline that has been laid in the previous vocal section.

Lazuli - DVD - "Live at the Odeon Theatre"