One-off Pangee's Hymnemonde from 1995

 

I love Pangaea, I mean, the concept.  Not just the fact that 300 million years ago, really an unimaginably long time ago, all the land on earth was combined into one big Aunt Jemima pancake mass and all the oceans were one (Panthalassa) but the fact that, it's thought, in some hundreds of millions years from now it will happen again, and it's probably happened a few times in the past and will continue into the future until the sun goes red giant and either releases the earth, or burns up the earth, or perhaps both, 4 billion years from now.

This album I had completely forgotten about until I was reviewing old files and thought about whether the amazing guys who composed the music had made anything else, and looking into it on discogs it seems they didn't, not to mention, their masterwork was composed back in 1995, already now 27 years ago!  Generation Z and their stupid tiktok, had not even happened yet! Can you believe that, all you millennials slaving away at minimum wage office jobs?

The music is all instrumental and is cut into 3 parts with one side long suite that is absolutely out of this world. Of course I love the fact they perfectly imitated the old prog sound, but unlike so many others in the 90s and since, they brought in original sounds, melodies, chord changes, instead of slavishly copying the usual 'standard prog' playbook of diminished chords, symphonic sounds with lush arrangements, etc.

Like the best prog of all, the music keeps changing every minute or two, sometimes radically differently. It seems like someone put years of work into these compositions to be honest (tbh as the kids say), and IRS (it really shows).

The second track, called Cataracte (ie waterfall) does start with a familiar minor or diminished guitar arpeggio, which recalls French 70s band Asia Minor or Mahavishnu, and then the thick guitars remind me also of the great great Arachnoid LP, but the music moves into truly totally original material very quickly thereafter:

Really a masterpiece for all time, without a doubt.