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Review: 'Marcel Singor'
'Futureproof'   

-  Label: 'www.marcelsingor.com'
-  Genre: 'Eighties' -  Release Date: '27.3.15.'

Our Rating:
This is the new album by Dutch guitar hero Marcel Singor whose press release seems to suggest he is the missing link between Steve Vai and Prince who when he isn't being a "Stunt Guitarist" teaches the instrument at the Amsterdam Conservatory Of Pop Music. He is also very stuck in the wrong parts of the 1980's.

The album opens with Authority a song so stuck in 80's drum and production values as to sound dated beyond belief and no matter how good the vocals may be they have a Milli Vanilli meets Wood Beez era Scritti Politti sound to them with the odd guitar flourish breaking through the bad synth pop and sounding bewilderingly out of place. So he reckons he's peaking on track 2 well only if your Idea of peaking is 80's soundtrack music with overblown guitar and what sounds more like a digi bass sample than played notes it could almost be a Keytar with Maze style vocal arrangements it's like listening to a re-issue rather than a new release.

Let's Not Talk about just how terrible this album sounds, it's so over-produced and fake blinging loads a money 1980's wrongness like it's been stewed in every bad 80's cliched euro pop that thinks Glenn Mederios is a musical god and that Harold Faltermayer was the greatest keyboards player of the 20th century as talking about this songs effect on me that has me craving some real heavy musical ear cleansing when this is over.

Futureproof sounds like the future stopped in 1988 and that the most futuristic artists ever were Prefab Sprout and the Blow Monkeys with an inexplicable over the top grandiose guitar solo than needs someone with 50 scarves on each arm to play it in the billowing wind on an isolated mountain top in the video. Late Contender is mercifully brief like they have tried to reign themselves in and in as much is about the only song worth giving a listen to if you don't love 80's over production.

Flash might have sounded flash in 1982 but in 2015 it sounds monumentally out of place as he waits for the world to come around again and let him live his heyday again as Marcel Signor really doesn't want the 1980's to end. Talking of ends the ending on Flash is the best thing about it. Colour My Time starts like the worst kind of 80's overblown ballad and delivers like he wants a marriage of Whitesnake and Colour Me Badd with a little hint of Scritti Pollitti.

Practice is something I'm sure Marcel Signor has done loads and loads of as everything is extremely well played, what he hasn't practiced is keeping up with modern production sounds as this could be on that old Marty Fogel solo album from the end of the 70's only with a more preposterous guitar solo than anything on Many Heads Bobbing at last.

Starstruck sounds on the intro like it's going to be all Whitesnake lighters in the air balladeering until the vocals come in and they are Owner of a Lonely Heart era Yes it ends up being kind of wallpaper soft rock. Technicolour opens with a keyboard line that Imagination would be proud of mixed with some of what I think he means by Stunt Guitar that actually comes across like background incidental guitar playing in an 80's movie or episode of Miami Vice, I'd have hated this song if I heard it in the 1980's and have a similar reaction nowadays it is so oddly dated.

The album has a couple of bonus tracks on the digital edition I'm reviewing from that Side Effects is the first of and has such an retro bad 80's sound full of really cheap and nasty programmed drums with the odd guitar flourish and some very bargain basement Prince like vocals. Somehow it ends up sounding like a Talk Talk or Flock Of Seagulls out-take.

Soundbite the closing track is more Cutting Crew meets Gary Moore than anything with a sound so dated you'd never believe it comes from this century let alone this year it's head scratchingly odd how buried the guitar is in the mix for an alleged Guitar god until it finally comes in for a very Gary Moore like solo.
If this was some long lost album from the 1980's there might be some merit in it, but as a new album in 2015 I totally don't get it at all, avoid unless you love living in the eighties. www.marcelsingor.com
  author: simonovitch

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