PHIDEAUX : Doomsday afternoon (Self-production)
Review published in KOID'9 Nr62 – Summer 2007
Phideaux Xavier had promised it would be ready for the summer and he didn't lie. "Doomsday afternoon", Phideaux's sixth album should be just available when you will be reading these lines, and probably directly from him when he'll perform at the festival of Saint-Palais sur-mer durig the week-end between the 16th and the 18th of August. Please be aware that the Californian with the French name did a real big financial effort to come here and there won't be no less than eleven musicians on stage !
This man doesn't half-do things - nor does he in the studio ! The Phideaux project is a bit like a big family, you know about it if you've read the interview with Xavier that was published in Koid'9 61. The multi-instrumentalist has enrolled some new musicians and, quite often, it is thanks to the Internet and the huge MySpace community that these encounters happened.
Actually, the list of musicians playing on this album is pretty long, and it's made longer due to the fact that we find 15 members from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (strings, woods, brass). Those ones performed on 4 tracks, including some of the longest ones and their contribution is just excellent.
The band found a new bass player, Matthew Kennedy and teamed up again with keyboard player Mark Sherkus (with some more analogic keyboards). Apart from Gabriel Moffat (sound engineer and guitar player !), we've got again the four female vocalist who sing harmony vocals but also perform some duets with Xavier - or even sing solo ! As for the latter, in addition to the singing, he takes in charge the acoustic guitars and some piano, this instrument being featured on most songs.
Among the guests : a lead guitarist on two tracks (Joel Weinstein), Martin Orford from IQ for a nice synthesizer solo and Matthew Parmenter from Discipline, on violin on four tracks, and also two flute players (Steve Dundon, Rob Martino), a new keyboard player who'll be on stage with the band, Johnny Unicorn, plus you've got Patti Amelotte who plays dulcimer on two tracks. Finally, you've got Arjen Lucassen, who couldn't contribute musically, but who can be heard speaking during a few seconds during the last piece of the album. (continued)