Centric Jones are a duo comprising Chris Fournier (guitar, bass, keys) and Tobe London (drums, keys) and assorted guest musicians including singer Laurie Larson. Chris originally became known in the prog scene in the Nineties with Fonya who released albums on both Kinesis and Musea, and has been working under the Centric Jones label for ten years, with Tobe joining for their last album ‘Foreign Tea’. Although this is very much a project as opposed to a group, Chris and Tobe worked these songs for nearly two years playing and refining before recoding to ensure that they were as organic as possible. In Laurie they have a singer in the style of Lana Lane who can soar to the heights when required, providing calmness to the complexity and almost frantic music that is sometimes taking place.
Stylistically this is quite a hard band to pin down, as while they have obviously been influenced by King Crimson these guys have also brought in elements of Tangerine Dream, Ozrics and Yes. In fact, there is a cover version on the album of “Then”, taken from “Time and a Word’. I’m not quite sure of the reason for doing this as it doesn’t bring anything dramatically new to the piece, but if you enjoyed the original then you will also like this. Tobe has a very busy approach to drumming, even using rimshots if that is the right thing to do, and this definitely takes the music to new heights – especially when it is in a section when the keyboards are the main instrument as while there can be long held-down swirling chords from Chris, Tobe keeps driving it along.
The album does sound a bit dated at times, but overall is a very solid effort and is worth looking out for.
www.progrockrecords.com
