MANDOKI SOULMATES: A Memory Of Our Future (ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Leslie Mandoki, a Hungarian artist who has been living as a refugee in Germany for several decades, recently dazzled us with his double production "Living in the Gap / Hungarian Pictures", in which his talents as a composer and arranger finally shone through, at the head of a band featuring a host of leading names in rock, both progressive and otherwise. After a tour highlighting the second part of this production, a tribute to Bela Bartok, the artist is back at the helm of a new project, "A Memory of our Future", which takes a critical look and delivers a socio-political analysis of the state of the world and its future.

As usual, Leslie Mandoki has brought together a new dream-team with an impressive pedigree to offer us some 80 minutes of music introduced by Ian Anderson's instantly recognizable flute, prelude to a first track ('Blood in the Water') surfing on the rhythmics and vocal harmonies of a Toto at his best. And while the album's twelve tracks are primarily built around traditional pop/rock elements, each track incorporates numerous instrumental parts in which the brass and woodwinds (notably the trumpet, but also John Helliwell's ever-sublime saxophone and clarinet) alternately lend a jazz-rock coloration ('Enigma of Reason', Age of Thought') or West Coast ('The Big Quit', 'Matchbox Racing'), with some surprising mixes inviting Andalusian guitar or marimbas to superimpose themselves on these different moods. Listeners looking for familiar references in all this will find themselves navigating between Toto, Alan Parsons, The Eagles and Mark Knopfler.

The composition and arrangement work is quite simply remarkable, both in terms of orchestration and the place given to each instrument, and in the setting of vocal harmonies bringing a warm coloring to the sound spectrum. On 'We Stay Loud', vocal harmonies are even treated in the style of Magma, transforming themselves into instruments and creating a delightful dialogue with the saxophone. The production is also up to scratch, providing a magnificent back for tracks that are each more delicious than the last.

Teeming with details and variations, and very progressive in its original sense, the music on "A Memory of our Future" is fascinating from start to finish, with each new listen bringing its own new pleasures, making this new album by Mandoki Soulmates an absolute must-have. - Official website

MANDOKI SOULMATES

A MEMORY OF OUR FUTURE

INSIDEOUT MUSIC

ROCK