There are these special moments when you get the idea of holding a musical gem in your hands. Such is the case when having a look at the completely self-released and produced album Bard’s Tale I: Esprits Du Soleil Levant (Spirits Of The Rising Sun) by the French one-man “band” DRAGON MANDOLE which comes along as a beautiful A5 sized foldable digipack and is fronted by an ancient Thai image of Hanuman, the Monkey-God. All put together and designed by multi-instrumentalist Padrigh who on Esprits Du Soleil Levant makes use of acoustic and electric guitars, mandolins, flutes, drums and many more instruments, making DRAGON MANDOLE really personal and without any outer influences by anyone from beginning to end. Even this alone deserves very high respect.
On Esprits Du Soleil Levant Padrigh/DRAGON MANDOLE sends the listener „through unknown places of Asia, from North to South, and to the other secret side”, really through dreamworlds and presents a very special and unique listening experience. The inside of the digipack offers close and personal notes and thoughts to each of the eleven songs. Sometimes the songs deal with personal dreams, ancient myths and even characters from videogames or Animes (e.g. from the PS2 game ICO).
To put the music behind this concept in words is not that easy. With a whole bunch of different instruments DRAGON MANDOLE create a sound and music which basically could be described as traditional Asian soundscapes. At this point I got to add that, not being really into this kind of music, it is the way I expect Asian music to sound like. So, the focus is on Asian ambience here but I even would say that one can hear classic tremolo guitar based Black Metal in some parts of the songs with the difference that the electric guitars are replaced here with traditional folk instruments resulting in a very unique sound. Sure – this might sound very strange if you only read it here but believe me the music itself is really awesome! Some songs also contain epic electric guitars which I would vaguely describe as an Asian sounding version of Bathory’s epic parts a la Hammerheart. But these parts aren’t prominent and mixed slightly in the background and only play a supporting role to the folk instruments. As I said before – it’s damn hard to categorize the music on Esprits Du Soleil Levant. And don’t get me wrong – besides these small parts this album has nothing really in common with Metal. It’s just wonderful music, now and then taking a bit of the various elements; Metal in general has to offer.
As my personal highlights I would name the calm, meditative and somehow sad Memories Of Ico, the mighty, bombastic (and thus the dream of an endless caravan of elephants perfectly underlining) La Routes Des Xangs and the epic Les Chevaux Dans Le Matin as well as the extremely dense closing track En Suivant la Rivière. But to be honest Esprits Du Soleil Levant is just plain brilliant from the beginning to the end and in the truest sense of the word dreamlike. I’m really excited how the following Bard’ Tale albums of Padrigh/DRAGON MANDOLE will sound like which, according to the notes on the homepage, will deal with other ancient cultures (Baltic, Celtic etc). Esprits Du Soleil Levant now deserves nothing less than the highest rating and after finishing this review I will dive once again into the offered dreamworlds. Fantastic, really fantastic! Together with the loving and personal packaging, layout and notes and the nearly ridiculous low price of 15 dollars (including worldwide shipping) this is a real masterpiece and must-have for open minded music lovers!