Tésis Ársis - "Ilusoes" Review

Artist/ Band: Tésis Ársis
Title: Ilusoes
Label: Self release
Year of Release: 2002
Artist/ Band Link (click for details/ ordering)

The Review:

Tesis Arsis is the brainchild of Brazilian Anderson Rodrigues, who plays all instruments here, primarily guitars and keyboards. Unlike most one-man productions, the use of programmed drums and bass doesn’t take away from the overall sound. The debut Ilusoes is a 5 song all instrumental album, with all tracks except one going over the ten minute mark. There seems to be a similar feel to each of the songs, which makes me think that instead “songs” each track is a “suite”.

Anderson’s guitar playing invokes a feeling that could be compared to a style done by Steve Hackett and even Andrew Latimer. As a keyboardist, Anderson comes off more like an atmospheric player rather than a soloist or virtuoso. This is fine by me since there’s so many that feel the need to be show-offs, which most of the time take away from the song composition. One thing I’m happy about whenever listening to Ilusoes is that it’s all instrumental. Not that I have anything against vocals but most of the time, vocals can take away from the overall feel for this type of album. Anderson’s instrumentation more than makes up for the lack of vocals.

After a few listens of this album, I can whole heartedly say this is by far one of the better one-man band production that I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. It should please fans of symphonic, instrumental progressive rock.

Reviewed by Ron Fuchs on February 14th, 2006

Tracks:

1. Ilusoes (12:58)

2. Cemiterio dos Vivos (15:58)

3. Global (11:11)

4. Num Tempo So (6:03)

5. Halle Bopp (19:17)