(Musea FGBG 4638 AR)
LU7- Efflorescence
(Musea FGBG 4638 AR)
From Aural Innovations #36 (May 2007)
LU7 is a Japanese duo of Luna Umegaki on keyboards and guitarist Tsutomu Kurihara. The web site describes them as cyber ethnic sound while the Musea bio calls them progressive rock. In a recent interview (Nucleus) the band describes a lot of details that I won’t go into here. Anyway, this is a re-release of their debut CD, which was originally only released on the internet in 2002 at mp3.com. All of the drums-percussion is programmed and the music is pretty laid back and melodic, even though some of the tracks are uptempo. Luna plays some beautiful and amazing piano, very jazzy but I don’t care much for her synthesizer work. IT is too new agey, sweet and sappy, not all that challenging. In the middle of the CD they perform a suite of 3 tracks by Ravel and feature the guitarist Tsutomu. Interesting to see that they have this man, Vagabond Suzuki pictured on the inside but he is not listed as playing on the CD. They forgot to list him under Flying Seed (found on the internet that he plays on this track). The CD also has a bonus track, UT06, which was not on the original internet release. The music is a little to mainstream light jazz for me….
For more information you can visit the Musea web site at http://www.musearecords.com
Visit the band on the web at: http://www.lu7.biz/
Reviewed by Scott Heller