Dard Productions - Stand The Test Of Time

Hear The Track Here

At first I thought Dard productions was a new name to me (as indeed it is), but I've since discovered a couple of familiar names are part of it. Essentially Dard Productions consists of four musicians from Canada, the US and Europe; Denis Couture, Rick Roman, Andrew Foyston (better known as AndyF) and Deborah Ivri. I have, of course, reviewed loads of AndyF tracks and even encountered Deborah Ivri - working with Onager who I also reviewed this month - on Arrival At The Gates (January 2008). So two known quantities there, and a couple of unknowns but even the most cursory of listens to this track will show you that stylistically this is four people who know exactly what they are doing.

Having said that I have to preface my own comments with a little proviso. I don't actually like songs of this style (a mix of epic spacerock music and classical music) and I found the song..how can I say this? A bit tame. This is very much a personal opinion because this track is as good as you are likely to hear anywhere, musically and technically and what it comes down to in the end is personal preference. Tell you what, it's only a short track give it a listen if the description has given you more than a headache...

I've played this and played it (in order I guess to justify my criticism) I finally concluded that it was the arrangement of the song - as opposed to the arrangement of the music - that was putting me off. See, Stand The Test Of Time contains some extremely strong lyrics, and Deborah is a good singer so why didn't it gel? Well, I think that the culprit is the structure of the song. Although it sounds like there should be peaks and valleys, the final thing comes across as very linear - almost like an exercise. Such criticism shouldn't keep you from making up your own mind, of course, because the music is certainly good enough and most people wouldn't notice a peak or valley if they tripped over one.

Recommended Orchestral rock.