From 10/29/2001
The new XII Alfonso album "Claude Monet - Volume 1"  is now avaliable by Musea.

From 10/29/2001
The new XII Alfonso album "Claude Monet" (part 1 of 3, 1883-1889) is now in the manufacturing process, and will be vailable in few weeks.
It will be available in a special cardboard box, including cd and 52 pages colour booklet.
The album should have been released in june, and we're sorry for this delay, but believe me the result is great. 
We're now working on the recording of the vol 2, and we'll keep you informed about it. 
If you're in touch with other prog sites, labels, radios or vendors, please feel free to forward them this message or to send me their contact or e mail address.

Philippe Claerhout / XII Alfonso
12pitbull@wanadoo.fr
Home address :
1 bis chemin de redoul
47300 Villeneuve sur Lot
France

From 07/15/2001

1) The fruit of our research in the paleolithic music domain is now available on a cd album, entirely recorded in prehistoric caves. The cd is not edited under the name of XII Alfonso, it's a generic project called "El Canto De Las Piedras (Le Chant Des Pierres, The Song Of Stones)". Musicians involved in this project are : François and Philippe Claerhout, Thierry Moreno, Michael Geyre, Joon Claudio, Boris Lelong and Philippe Rougé. Musically, the result is close to the track "Lithophonia", available on "Odyssées", but with a wider instrumentation this time (lithophones, flutes, percussions, voices, keyboards on one track). The booklet gives information about the project in three languages (spanish, english and french), and the cover design has been conceived by Poa Plume, also responsible for the design of the "Claude Monet" trilogy. The CD is currently availble exclusively at the Altamira Museum in Spain, or by mail order (see details at the end of this message).

2) Due to the pressure in the realisation of "El Canto De Las Piedras" (the Altamira museum opens on july 17th), we've not been able to mix entirely the first cd of "Claude Monet" in time. To avoid a release in the middle of summer, "Claude Monet vol 1" will be available in september. We all are very sorry for this delay.
For the most impatient of you, an extract of "Claude Monet vol 2", "Crusade for Olympia", will be available very soon on the new Musea Compilation, "Un Voyage en Progressif vol 6". 
And the demo version of an extract of "Claude Monet vol 3", "Le Tigre, le Vieil Homme et les Nénuphars", is now available on the sampler CD given with the new issue of excellent spanish Margen Magazine (also featuring an interview of the band). This version of that track won't be available anywhere else in the future. If you're interested in it, please contact Rafa Dorado / Margen Magazine, PO Box 465, 27080 Lugo, Spain. E mail : margen@arrakis.es.

From 04/14/2001

The Recording of "Claude Monet : 1883-1889", the first CD of the Claude Monet trilogy, is already almost completed. We have now started mixing the CD tracks, though also we have to add to the material just a few guitar and accordion episodes. 

The definitive album track listing is as follows : 1/ The Ways across the Cliffs 2/ I was Writing to You (sung by Bevinda) 3/ Giverny 4/ A Garden Like Nothing on Earth 5/ The Narrow Escape 6/ Seasons on Paintings 7/ The Ghost of the Neetles Island 8/ Conflicts 9/ The Red fanfare 10/ Underwater Cathedrals 11/ Cannibal Eye 12/ Antibes (sung by Catherine Alcover) 13/ Secrets of the Blue Air 14/ On the Road (sung by Bevinda) 15/ The Soul of Winter 16/ The Crusade for Olympia.

1883 was a very creative year for Monet. Then he was about in the middle of his life's way, and his long search for a new place of living was finished, at last, exactly the same year. It was a small town, Giverny, in which he spent the rest of his life's years. The same year, an exhibition devoted exclusively to his own paintings was organized for the first time in Monet's life. This event is the starting point of the real begining of his creative carreer, far from the other impressionnist painters who loved Monet's talents by no means too much. 

During the six next years, Monet will try to define a true subject of his paintings. It is still not known precisely up to now, but some specialists are sure that the subject of any picture created by Monet is hidden (somewhere yet) exactly in its primary object. Monet worked hardly, but anyway, he was often unsatisfied with his works. It was because of the lack of Monet's understanding about a real purpose of his paintings, until he realizes that the purpose of his paintings is not what he tried to represent, but that it's the light in itself.

Sixteen tracks of the first cd of the trilogy XII Alfonso are currently working on, is an endeavour to reflect the most significant episodes of Monet's life, doubts and problems, of his search for a key to open a door; the subject of his creation is hidden behind, though actually that door was open widely in the face of Monet himself.

Each CD of the Claude Monet Trilogy will be released as digipack, (invented by the POA PLUME agency) with a 40 pages booklet in both French and English languages. 

The instrumental base of the first CD features several acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, a wide variety of percussions, keyboards, vietnamese and syrian lutes, piano, accordion, flutes, vocals, to name a few. The musicians are : François and Philippe Claerhout, Thierry Moreno, Michael Geyre, Bevinda, Catherine Alcover, Stephane Rolland, Jean-Luc Treutenaere and Joon Claudio. 

The first CD will be released in june 2001 on Muséa Records. As for the second and the third CDs of the trilogy, we will complete them in the fall of the year. The work on the second CD has already begun, as Barry Palmer, (vocalist for Triumvirat and Mike Oldfield) is currently working on a song of Monet's life period when he was living in London.