Ritchie DeCarlo's Week by request, 2013

 

You can see on his discography here, he played a lot with Scott McGill who was previously posted back here.  The latter however is not playing on this work, which came out in 2013.

The awkwardly named title track, Week not Weak:

Not just crazy wham-bam electric guitar nuttiness, like the heretofore posted sets from the McGill Manring Stevens combo, this does show some delicatesse here and there and even some mellotron sounds.  I don't think there's much acoustic guitar, though I haven't listened through that carefully so far.  Synths played by Ritchie too.  So note the following keyboard track with synths + mellotron (presumably a digital or computer keyboard imitation) on the lovely complex modern classical composition called November Requiem for George:

Of course nowadays, AI / ChatGPT can do more than just replicate the mellotron sound and make it even more mellotronish, it can also replicate the whole album, making it a concept album to boot, the mood of that of the listener, his euphoria at hearing it, and even what he says to his wife upon hearing she hates the track! He can even make a new wife for the lucky guy!!  Presumably one day he will be able to create a while new personality for him too!  Isn't our future danged amazing?

Colored Music, from 1981 Japan

 

They made one new wavy, digitalish, electronic album back in 1981 then returned and made another one more recently, as you can see here.  But the music is not simple, it has a lot to interest us, of course it's not going to be at the same level some of the best already posted for ex. from Germany, but still worth hearing.  Consider, Anticipation:

And their Love Hallucination:

Forgas Band Phenomena Part 2, L'axe du fou 2009, Acte V 2012, L'oreille electrique 2018

 

That last album cover from 2018, I'm not gonna lie as my kids say, is just atrocious.  In theory it's almost as bad as the creations of AI? 

But title track from that one, L'oreille electrique, is for sure, musically remarkable:

Loin D'Issy, from 2012's Acte V, is notable for the way it changes dynamics, sound, directions several times over a relatively short (for this guy) 7 minute track:

Shockingly, it seems this gentleman is a late bloomer, for his last few albums are more interesting, at least to my (electric) ears, than the earliest ones, they show maturity and a kind of even-handedness to the progressive creative that is really heartily welcome.  Of course the style is very much our old beloved prog fusion with the classic arrangements, the typical instrumentation, but the ideas and melodies are not just original but very professionally played and thought out with none of the semi-formed ideas that characterized his first Cocktail album, with the exception of the sidelong work My Trip.  So in this case and it might be the first time for this blog (for Pepe Maina it was my impression the music became a bit boring and similar towards the end) I can honestly say it, I would look forward to any new releases from Patrick Forgas.

Forgas Band Phenomena Part 1, Roue Libre 1997, Extra-Lucide 1999, Soleil 12 2005

 

Part 3 really in the overview of this composer, after his solo works.

The title track from 1999's Extra-Lucide is remarkable, with its high energy jazz and synthesizer intensity:

The 2005 work Soleil 12, on the other hand, is notable for the fact it has only 4 tracks and one of them is over 30 minutes long!  At my age I already find it quite an imposition to listen to the entirety of a 20 minute side-long track, and this one is almost double the length in time.  I keep putting off listening to it to some other day but guess what, that day may never come.  For all I know it might even be a brilliant composition well worth the time, like Martz' The Pillory, or the Yeti, or a lot of the Xalph material.  

Note the info:

Recorded live at Le Triton, Les Lilas (France), March 15, 2005.
On the track 4. there is a brief moment of distortion on the violin at around the 8 minute mark. It is not a defect on this CD.

The title track displays this violin playing, a la Didier Lockwood quite nicely:

More Patrick Forgas with the solo works after Cocktail (L'oeil 1990, Art D'echo 1993, Synchronicite 2002)

 

The first two albums continue along the same lines as the first with the falsetto singing on top of typically one chord tracks that develop in a light or playful manner, a bit Canterburyesque but much, much simpler.  That last one from 2002 is a complete all-out new age slow keyboard work, which is radically different from all the other albums and to me a bit uninteresting.

From 1990's L'oeil, Ze / Medley is a remarkable composition but the remainder, almost the whole of it, suffers from the tinny digital synths & 80s drum machine that afflicts so many works from this period in time:

1993's Art D'echo gets a lot more interesting and is sometimes quite crazy creative, consider Cache ta Paine (hide your pain, the de facto motto of all middle aged or older men):

As mentioned earlier, Synchronicite is a departure being mostly new agey keyboards and in fact, it's the only work from him in this style, eg Anima:

At times it sounds like the soundtrack to a video game, such as that for Tomb Raider.  Perhaps inspired by that one?