Review in French



HEAVENS CAFE' performed by ART ROCK CIRCUS [USA]

Updated 9/21/00 John Miner

"Difficult to imagine this arriving in Las Vegas! John Miner being the instigator of this Progressive Rock based theatrical creation. Qualified by the Las Vegas Review Journal, "A triumph in the development of art and musical theater", the performance seems, listening to these slices, to be progressive more or less. More psychedelic in the approach with the guitar playing of Miner with his special tricks and cosmic moods that reverberate an early seventies sound of better effect. The veritable name of the group of John Miner is, in fact, Art Rock Circus, a musical & theatrical group as of the good old times relating in the cultural movement (yes!, yes!) my good friends, with the same experimental nativity. This period is not lost here with the sound developed by Miner. His tribe goes back pulling together the popular and commercial. These 3 albums (Heavens Cafe¹ both Live and Studio as well as Mantra Sunrise) propel us 30 years ago when we uncover the wonders of the tentative merging of the different trends of rock, classical and jazz. Atmospheric guitar and meandering flute are not missed in this picture either. The same for the echoing voice of Joel Bissing in Mantra Sunrise, assuring the better of this unusual trio for our era! Again regarding Heavens Cafe¹,it's interesting viewing these photographs on the jacket, seeing the performers of Heaven's Cafe, it¹s actors, singers and dancers. Alternative psychedelic, progressive, which seems to observe the 10 commercial commandments of our dear national musical heritage!!.. One can only imagine the surprise in Las Vegas to see a spectacle of this type, a Rock Opera that is based on the vision of the Heaven's Cafe's studio album, is the traditional equivalent of ³Phantom of the Opera², (or 70¹s ³Phantom of the Paradise²/ Brian De Palma version!). The progressive world is not destined for this music as much. Nevertheless Miner¹s arrangements are delicious , and his dated and archaic vision of a musical comedy, strange as it may seem, adopt the changes of voice, both male and female into a show that on arrival, is a pure moment of progressive rock as some would only dare to try in the 70¹s, with the touching and unstoppable nativity of those blessed years! Miner knows to find his audience, those defectors of the masses, in the progressive underground, like an island of resistance, facing the hemogeny of the commercial non music that attacks the ears of those who turn on the button to the radio! Bruno Versmisse

HARMONIE MAGAZINE ISSUE #40

Harmonie Magazine