MORICE BENIN-APOCALYPSE…, LP, 1980, FRANCE

Highly obscure and mostly very winning French prog pop confections that come larded with the sort of rustic-to-bombastic sympho drama and theatrical spieling that directly descends from the hugely popular French proggers in Ange. It's a Genesis-derived sound that would influence a raft of French acts that followed (most notably Mona Lisa) and it's a gambit that works a similar sort of emotionally exaggerated magic here, if one of a rather slighter caliber than Ange's transcendent gestures. Quebec's Harmonium would hit this same charmed and elevated zone around the time of their L'Heptade. It's also a sound that can be a bit of a slow burner, with its subtle power accruing and becoming more evident over repeated plays, which has very much been the case with having re-sat with this one; an album that I'd initially mentally filed away as interesting if slight but which now in hindsight seems rife with fascination.

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