Gone is the IQ -ish sound of the previous two Ines albums in favour of ‘Street Fighting Years’ era Simple Minds and world music innovator Peter Gabriel.
Written by: Eric
ARTIST: Ines
ALBUM: The Flow
LABEL: Tempis Fugit
SERIAL: 726221 2
YEAR: 1999
CD INFO: Discogs Info
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Germany, Italy
LINEUP: Ines Fuchs – keyboards, accordion, backing vocals * Hansi Fuchs – guitars, vocals * Davide Piai – bass, chapman stick * Chicco Grosso – vocals * Massimo Michieletto – guitars * Marco Michieletto – drums, percussion
TRACK LISTING: 01 Feel The River’s Dance * 02 The River And Me * 03 In A Space Made Of Blue * 04 Flow 1 * 05 I’m Part Of The River * 06 After All These Moves * 07 Downhill * 08 Stranded * 09 Flow 2 * 10 On The Shore * 11 Flow 3 * 12 The Place By The Sea * 13 Wishing Well
Background
Ines is or was a German/Italian group fronted by keyboardist Ines Fuchs and husband Hansi Fuchs. Although several musicians filtered their way through Ines over the course of four CD’s, for ‘The Flow’ the duo were augmented by engineer and producer Davide Piai on bass, whose credits include German bands Airborne and prog metal outfit Ivanhoe.
Vocalist Chicco Grosso and brothers Massimo and Marco Michieletto hopped on board from revered Marillion influenced Italian band Asgard.
The Songs
‘The Flow’ is a concept album revolving around the esoteric Flow Theory which is a state of focused consciousness or total involvement resulting in complete personal satisfaction. If this sounds a little too heavy handed, it’s not really, and the music more than holds up against the narrative.
Gone is the IQ -ish sound of the previous two albums in favour of ‘Street Fighting Years’ era Simple Minds and world music innovator Peter Gabriel. It’s expanded by uncredited violin, hurdy gurdy and bag pipes.
Exotic and percussive opener ‘Feel The River’s Dance’ has a Gabriel feel although Chicco Grosso’s voice has a higher range. ‘The River And Me’ rocks a little harder, funnily enough reminding me of Big Big Train‘s recent output. It’s a winner and so are the instrumentals that pepper the CD, in particular the Celtic influenced ‘Flow 1’.
The atmospheric ‘After All These Moves’ again hints at the former Genesis front man while Hansi Fuchs takes over vocal chores on the very AOR ‘Downhill’ which has a similar vibe to the material found on Kerry Livgren‘s When Things Get Electric’.
In Summary
The last we heard from Ines was as the Ines Project and 2002’s ‘Slipping Into The Unknown’ which took the world music/ progressive pop sound a step further. While all of their discs are easy to find, ‘The Flow’ is the one to put money on. Highly recommended.
