I found Morrison Hotel a bit overrated. To me, it's a classic rock album lacking a bit of the adventure of previous albums. It does have a stronger blues feel therefore providing a relief from both fans and critics. Fans and critics didn't like how The Soft Parade was swamped in strings and horns, and had a loungey approach (to be fair, actually most of the album isn't that bad and I liked about 80% of the album with "Tell All the People" easily my least favorite). But I really did miss the more adventurous material on previous albums, it's almost like on Morrison Hotel they were playing it safe to get more radio airplay and get the rock critics back on their side. L.A. Woman is the final Doors album as far as fans (and even the press) are concerned (although if you view the two post-Morrison albums as more Ray Manzarek/Robbie Krieger albums they're not that bad). L.A. Woman could be seen like the Double Fantasy (John Lennon) or Blackstar (Bowie) of The Doors knowing that Morrison will no longer be with us shortly after the release of L.A. Woman. Like Morrison Hotel I found it rather overrated. In this case a stronger blues presence and I have never been much of a blues fan, and it sounds like blues I've heard millions of times, with Jim Morrison naturally adopting a more bluesy voice. Half the album is blues-dominated, and I find them rather boring. It's when the album moves away from blues and more into pop and psych realms is where this album really shines. "Love Her Madly" is the most pop-oriented piece on the album and naturally a hit. Even Ray brings out his old Vox, so it sounds like The Doors everyone can recognize. "L'America" is a really weird psych piece, to say the least. "Hyacinth House" is also a nice pop-oriented number, but there's no doubt the highlights for me are the title track and "Riders on the Storm". "Riders on the Storm" is nothing short of a classic. Even as a kid I really dug the tune and that ominous tone, not to mention that wonderful electric piano solo Ray Manzarek gives us along with the sound of thunder. The title track is also a great adventurous number but no need explaining it, classic FM rock plays that one constantly along with "Riders on the Storm". "WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)" is one of the better blues numbers on this album and I do enjoy it, but I really think they should have gone back to what they have done on their first two albums although with an updated sound. L.A. Woman won back the fans and the critics, but I felt too much of the blues bogged it down. To me an overrated album but has some great stuff (usually the stuff that moves away from the blues).

QUINTETO ARMORIAL were a five piece band from Brazil who formed in 1970 and disbanded in 1980. They managed to release four studio albums during this time, with the first two being highly recommended by fans. They were an all acoustic band with some traditional instruments in play. I love that another reviewer referred to their music as "pure". And I like that they could pull up in a van, setup in 5 minutes and be playing to an adoring audience that would just grow. No drum kit here, but three of the guys play percussion. No vocals either.

This is their sophomore release from 1976, and we get eight tracks worth under 35 minutes. It's that third song with the long title that stands out at over 7 1/2 minutes. It feels like they pieced this one together, but it works. I don't feel like the interplay is as impressive as on their debut, and the music here is more mature, but the debut is the one to get in my opinion. I'm not into all acoustic music but that debut left me so impressed that I later came back and bumped it up from 3.5 stars to 4 stars. This one is a step down in my opinion, but I could imagine folk fans pointing to this one as their favourite from this band.

According to one Bio I read, their music consisted of combing that Brazilian renaissance style with European medieval ones. There was an actual movement in Brazil back then called the Armorial Movement which was based in northeastern Brazil. Sort of a digging into Brazil's cultural past in an artistic manner, combined with folklore. And this band really represents well that ethos, but without lyrics. The front cover certainly shows that good versus evil reality.

Such a talented band, and I kept thinking of this band doing what I suggested earlier, playing on the street and imaging the crowd growing and growing. They won a prestigious critics award in San Paulo in 1974 after the release of their debut. Folk fans need to check this band out! I gave their debut 4 stars, but I feel this is a definite step down.

Released later the same year as "Stormbringer", this second and final equal billing collaboration between the Martyns is vastly superior, from the production to the songwriting and arrangements. Both artists are hitting their stride here, though Beverley was never, or at least only when it was too late, afforded the opportunity to build upon this. It's a shame because her assuredness in the timely "Primrose Street" and the infectious "Auntie Aviator" should have magnified her legacy. In the meantime, John pens two classics - the atypically melodic "Give Us a Ring" in which Beverley contributes triumphant backing vocals, and the title cut, beginning like many of his ballads but morphing into a boisterous extended piano and sax blues outro that hints at higher ambitions. This is the only road worth navigating in your exploration of the brief tenure of these two talents as a single entity.

Fans of Ske and Tea, Hear Ye!

Hearing this tragically overlooked full-length debut (overlooked here, anyway), the first connections my brain foisted on me were the feisty Italian group Ske and the formidable American rock band The Tea Club. More on those associations later. The unusually named Bill In The Tea are a collective of gents from Sicily who, according to their own bio, are pursuing a "heavily mathematical prog rock from late seventies but eventually evolves into a smoother and plainer musical architecture, strongly influenced by post-rock and neo-psychedelia, with a clear reference to bossa nova, blues and jazz music." Their impressive full-length debut Big Tree was released in Summer 2013, and it blew me away.

Bill in the Tea has released herein a remarkable collection of innovative, adventurous progressive rock tracks featuring challenging chords and complex, fusion-styled jams, the spirit of which reminded me of Ske's first album, 1000 Autunni, although Bill uses more guitar and has less exotic classical instrument support. At the same time, like The Tea Club, Bill brings the complex aspirations of every song back to the realm of appealing melodies, where the songs not only dazzle you but are willing to be assimilated with ease. Yes, it cooks and it dazzles, but it's never impenetrable. This is not snob-rock. This music wants to be loved, wants to engage. Cerebral need not be stuffy.

And I adore the sound palette they paint with here. So much beauty. Right out the gate, an Oceansize-type, math-ish burst followed by plaintive clean guitar chords and long key notes that make one feel lost. Suddenly violin enters. Soft jazzy guitar. Violin and piano together. No one does this vibe as well as the Italians and yet this not typical RPI of the symphonic vein. This is a younger and more contemporary approach, more eclectic, maybe post-rock influenced. Vocals arrive in the second track. The band is more instrumental than vocal-based, but when the vocals are present they remind me of The Tea Club yet again. The third track employs some electronica with recorded spoken-word dialogue. Back to really hot jamming with the aptly titled "I Wanna Be Frank Zappa." The album gets stronger as it goes on with the second half being my favorite stuff, long jams loaded with emotion and color.

I truly hope that we have not heard the last of this band. It's over a decade now with no follow-up album, and this is too good to not be followed up. I really want to hear where they go next. They offer a delightful mixture of the cerebral and the dreamy. They can rock but they also drift along like a summer breeze, a mixture of feelings and emotions not easy to articulate. Bravo!

GOOD NEWS FOR THE SYMPHOMANIACS!

First Jacob Broers + Gerben Klazinga have delivered an awesome Vintage Keyboard Heaven sound on this new album: from brassy 'Keith Emerson Fanfare For The Common Man' synthesizer runs in Prelude, and lots of 'Tony Banks Mellotron choirs' to 'Rick Wakeman Minimoog' flights in Shame and Iconoclast, wow, what a thrill.

Then the guitar by the very talented Mark Bogert (known from his Magoria project and a tour with Arena): when he joined Knight Area he added an often metallish flavor, but here on Second Thoughts his sound is often more close to David Gilmour, Andy Latimer and Steve Rothery, from sensitive to howling. But also harder-edged like fat guitar riffs in Prelude and heavy work in the classical inspired Shame, exciting Delusional and catchy Forgotten, wow.

And "last but not least" the lead vocals, mainly sung by new Broers + Klazinga member Mark Smit (once Queen cover band Miracle), like 'other Mark' also ex-Knight Area. I remember his first performances with Knight Area, early 2004, he immediately impressed me but here on Second Thoughts he stuns me even more, what an excellent voice. The one moment tender in the mellow parts, the other moment powerful in the bombastic eruptions. Apart from Mark Smit the vocals are also delivered by Mark Bogert his wife Nadine: solo in the varied and dynamic track The Mirror, and duo vocals in the catchy Forgotten, what a wonderful and crystal clear but also wide ranged voice.

Now about the 11 often dynamic compositions on this new Broers + Klazinga album. Despite the obvious echoes from 76-77 Genesis, ELP, Fish Marillion and early Kayak the band is developing a trademark Broers + Klazinga sound: lots of tension between the mellow and mid-tempo songs and parts, with bombastic outbursts, loaded with Mellotron choirs and moving guitar runs, topped with Moog Taurus bass pedals and synthesizer flights, and backed by a fluent rhythm- section (all done by mister G. Klazinga, in Prelude he sounds like Cozy Powell). The 'wow' factor is frequent, especially in Wait For Sleep (Mark Bogert shines), No One Left To Blame, the epic highlight Delusional (top notch Dutch symphonic rock), The Test Of Time, Read Me and the final track Iconoclast (what a glorious synthesizer - and majestic Mellotron sound).

After their strong debut effort entitled Burdens of The Mind from 2021 this new Broers + Klazinga effort contains international quality, highly recommended, especially for symphomaniacs!

I might shock some here, but I think this album is on par with Across the Rubicon, if not even better.

Yet again we have a concept album. Across the Rubicon was an exploration on memory; this time, Silhouette explores liberty. The silver thread is a butterfly, translation of "Papillon", name of a book on a (self-claimed) wrongly convincted man who escaped. Little disclaimer btw, the status of the story is discussed, it is not entirely sure whether he was wrongly charged, and apparently the story mixes up several pieces of different stories (it is said the author wanted to compile different stories, about different people, but the editor pushed for him to consistently use the 1st p. sing.). To be sure, the butterfly is also a symbol of freedom by itself. The last track is indeed titled "Wings to fly". The exploration on the theme is once again complex and going through a lot of stuff, including love (see notably Lost Paradise and Beyond the Seventh Wave). The progression of the album is "rhapsodic" as are all good concept albums, with a few transitory tracks, namely the two "Betrayed", and you can probably include "Escape".

For the music by itself, we also have the same qualities compared with the last album. Silhouette has established their styles, after 2 albums of searching for themselves and increasing quality (1st one, The Maze, was almost a kind of "pilote", with little consistency I think, no very long track, and the vocals were not great; 2nd one, Moods, was actually already kinda good, but the theme was not as rich, and some of the music was still slightly boring). Their special use of keyboards notably creates a weird, alienish atmosphere, which is hard to describe but is found a lot since Across the Rubicon (and some of Moods already), notably Breathe and Grendel Memory; it contrasts with the vocals which are unusually "innocent" as a commenter put it, and they are thus on par with several of the tracks; yet, at times, the lyrics, theme, get darker, but the vocals keep that innocent touch, which can create strange contrats. I would really understand if some were taken off from this way of singing, it's very subjective - personally I really love it. The use of guitars also goes increasing, and although we have neither a great experimental creativity, nor a solid virtuosity, they remain always melodic, pleasant. In this album, you can hear a few solos across Lost Paradise notably, as well as some naked pink-floydish guitar dancing in the background on the last track.

All of the album is pleasant, there is no track I want to skip.

Additionally, some parts of it are literally catchy, in a way I very rarely find in prog/neo prog. There is notably a very satisfying chorus in Lost Paradise that I may have humed in my mind like a million times, with all my heart. The music progression on that track really supports and enhances that core, with the drums, the keyboards, the guitars, all expressing themselves from the very beginning. Honestly I don't think anyone can have anything but a great time while listening to that track. Web of lies, in 2 parts, is also great.

— First review of this album —

The first reunion of The Trip ended in 2014 after keyboardist and original member Joe Vescovi passed away. Drummer Furio Chirico gave up and from 2015 on the name and brand of the band has been in the loving hands of Pino Sinnone, drummer on the first two albums of the seventies. Nonetheless, in 2019 Furio Chirico decided to come back to the old repertory of the band with a new line up and "with the main idea of continuing to open new paths through research and experimentation, without any nostalgic approach but staying true to the most genuine progressive rock texture". In 2022 the new course took form under the name Furio Chirico's The Trip (to avoid confusion with the other current incarnation of the band) and released an interesting album entitled "Equinox" with a line up featuring, along with Furio Chirico (drums), also Paolo Silvestri (Hammond, synthesizers, vocals), Giuseppe Lanari (lead vocals, bass) and Marco Rostagno (guitars, vocals).

The opening track, "I'm Fury", was composed by keyboardist Paolo Silvestri who dedicated it to his new band leader. Furio Chirico is here free to express his explosive, virtuosic and brilliant drumming, interacting with the organ and the other instruments in an exemplary way. The rhythm is fast, the atmosphere is full of emotion, the new trip begins...

The following "Mother Earth" deals with environmental issues and global warming. The music and lyrics depict a gloomy, arid landscape were you breath sand and ashes. Water is rare and precious, it looks like a Holy Grail. The countdown has begun, time is running out, Mother Earth is dying while we waste our energies in pointless discussions instead of trying to save her...

The beautiful "A Suite For Everyone" is a long, complex piece that blends baroque influences and psychedelic visions. It starts softly, the atmosphere is dreamy and relaxed. Then the rhythm takes off and the music goes through many changes. It's time for memories and reflections about the time spent running after freedom, music, friendship, love and dreams. To be honest, the music is excellent but the vocal parts are not always up to the task and I think it's a pity that the band did not choose to sing in their mother language. After all, Arvid "Wegg" Andersen was English but the new singer is not...

"Catch The Dreamin'" is a good track where the music and lyrics revolve around the concept of "carpe diem", the necessity to seize the day and try to make your dreams come true when you have the chance because life is short and nothing can last forever...

"Downward Onward" tells of a personal crises. Boredom, drug addiction and bad habits could push you to lock your dreams and even your whole life in a closet, so you fall down. But sometimes joyful memories can do the trick and reverse the course of a life fathomed to doom. The image of your mother appears. She's here to support and comfort you with her adorable tenderness telling you that you can go on and make it...

The acronym of "The Reason Inside Playing" is T.R.I.P. It's a piece dedicated to the late bassist, vocalist and founder member Arvid "Wegg" Andersen and to the early days of the band. According to an interview, the lyrics of this piece were conceived as a kind of wordplay and the man in black they mention is, of course, Ritchie Blackmore who was part, for a short period, of the very first nucleus of The Trip...

The instrumental "Summer Solstice" was composed by guitarist Marco Rostagno and, according to the artist, it's conceived "as a story told by the voice of the lead guitar, imagining the sun that, in its maximum splendour, defeats the darkness, generating a true rebirth". The fiery electric guitar sound is in the forefront and the interaction with the other instruments is pretty good...

"Remember Joe" is dedicated to the late The Trip's keyboardist and founder member Joe Vescovi. It begins by a church like organ section, a kind of requiem that might recall Bach, then the vocals evoke images from Atlantis and a call for a Time Of Change, beautiful sounds from the past that last in the memory of the music lovers. The final organ pattern fades in the last track, the short, dreamy instrumental "Story Of A Friend"...

In addition to the CD, this work also includes a DVD with the recording of the live performance at the Salone Internazionale del Libro in Turin on May 23, 2022 where the members of the band showcase all their potential on stage. The set list features three songs from the new album, a selection of tracks from the 1972 album "Atlantide", and a piece from the second album from 1971, "Caronte".

On the whole, a very good work.

Review Nº 864

"The Thrill Of It All" is a compilation album of Roxy Music that was released in 1995. It features songs from all every eight studio albums of the band. But, apart from that, this compilation album has also many other things like single B sides, various remixes and different versions. Thus we may say that it stands probably the most complete Roxy Music's retrospective compilation album that ranges all their history. So, this is the ultimate collection of Roxy Music, really.

"The Thrill Of It All" has sixty-seven tracks and is divided into four discs. Disc 1 and disc 2 have sixteen tracks, disk 3 has eighteen tracks and disc four has seventeen tracks. The first three discs only cover the tracks recorded on the original studio albums of the band. The fourth disc covers the single B sides, the remixes and the different versions.

Since we are in presence of a compilation album with so many tracks, I'm not going to analyze them individually, as I usually do, but to make only a global appreciation about the choice of them in its context, mentioning album by album.

The first CD has sixteen tracks: "Re-Make/Re-Model", "Ladytron", "If There Is Something", "2HB", "Chance Meeting" and "Sea Breezes" are all from their eponymous debut studio album which was released in 1972. "Do The Strand", "Beauty Queen", "Strictly Confidential", "Editions Of You", "In Every Dream Home A Heartache", "The Bogus Man" and "For Your Pleasure" are all from their second studio album "For Your Pleasure" which was released in 1973. "Street Life", "Just Like You" and "Amazona" are all from their third studio album "Stranded" which was released in 1973. About the tracks on this CD, they're all great. As we know, "Roxy Music" and "For Your Pleasure" are two excellent works, the two best, most innovative and progressive of the band. "Stranded" is another great album from the band, less innovative, but still a great album. In reality, all tracks that belong to all these albums could fit perfectly well here.

The second CD has also sixteen tracks: "A Song For Europe", "Mother Of Pearl" and "Sunset" are also from "Stranded". "The Thrill Of It All", "Three And Nine", "All I Want Is You", "Out Of The Blue", "Bitter Sweet", "Casanova", "A Really Good Time" and "Prairie Rose" are all from their fourth studio album "Country Life" which was released in 1974. "Love Is The Drug", "Sentimental Fool", "Could It Happen To Me?", "Both Ends Burning" and "Just Another High" are all from their fifth studio album "Siren" which was released in 1975. About the tracks on this CD, they're all great too. It has some more tracks from "Stranded" and tracks from "Country Life" and "Siren". The same I said about the first CD also applies perfectly well here. All tracks chosen are all great but if they had been others the final result would be equally good too. "Stranded", "Country Life" and "Siren" are three albums very similar in terms of quality.

The third CD has eighteen tracks: "Manifesto", "Trash", "Angel Eyes", "Stronger Through The Years", "Ain't That So" and "Dance Away" are all from their sixth studio album "Manifesto" which was released in 1979. "Oh Yeah", "Same Old Scene", "Flesh And Blood", "My Only Love", "Over You" and "No Strange Delight" are all from their seventh studio album "Flesh + Blood" which was released in 1980. "More Than This", "Avalon", "While My Heart Is Still Beating", "Take A Chance With Me", "To Turn You On" and "Tara" are all from their eighth studio album "Avalon" which was released in 1982. About the tracks on this CD, I can't say the same. If "Avalon" is another excellent album and all tracks are great, on "Manifesto" and "Flesh + Blood" isn't the same. As we know, despite the good quality of many tracks on both albums, they aren't properly progressive. We are talking about tracks more in the musical vein of pop and disco.

The fourth CD has seventeenth tracks: "India" is also from "Avalon", "Manifesto" is a remake of the title track of "Manifesto", "Trash 2" is a different version of the original track of "Manifesto", "Virginia Plain", "Pyjamarama", "Jealous Guy", "The Numberer", "The Pride And The Pain", "Hula Kula", "Your Application's Failed", "Lover", "Sultanesque", "South Downs" and "Always Unknowing" are non-albums' tracks that weren't originally released on any of their studio albums and "Dance Away", "Angel Eyes" and "The Main Thing" are extended remixed versions of the original tracks on "Manifesto" and "Avalon". About the tracks on this CD, they're almost all leftovers or alternative versions. They aren't really bad. Some are better than others, but I think we can highlight three of them, "Virginia Plain", "Pyjamarama" and "Jealous Guy". They usually appear on many other compilation albums released by Roxy Music.

Conclusion: Thus, due to all I wrote above, "The Thrill Of It All" is an excellent compilation album of Roxy Music. It covers the entire career of the band plus some rare material not usually available on the other releases from the band. As all we know, Roxy Music always was a very special band in the panorama of the progressive rock music and they always had a huge legion of prog fans, in which I include myself. So, "The Thrill Of It All" is an excellent addition to any collection of hard fans of the band, especially due to the rare material on it. This is, certainly, the main reason to buy it.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

The voluntary absence of Steve Walsh from Kansas prior to the release of "Vinyl Confessions" was a blow that the band absorbed with difficulty. But the subsequent departure of Robby Steinhardt with his representative violins and significant vocal contribution, added to Kerry Livgren's dry creativity, were events too notorious to go unnoticed, and ended up weighing down one of the band's least fortunate musical proposals, "Drastic Measures" (1983), their ninth album.

And in this context, the active John Elefante, very much given to developing conventional AOR structures with accessible, markedly melodic atmospheres and even with some elements of bubbly eighties synth pop, took a large part of the compositional responsibility. The result brought under his arm agile and weightless developments such as "Fight Fire with Fire", "Everybody's my Friend", "Don't Take Your Love Away", the dreary ballad "Andi" (although with a powerful and brave stance on gender identity), or the pompous lightness of "Incident on a Bridge" (one of Livgren's few contributions), tracks in which it is difficult to recognise reminiscences of the early sonorities of Kansas.

And despite the almost imperceptible presence of progressive elements in "Drastic Measures", some passages like the experimental industrial interlude in "Mainstream", the dynamic melody and interesting refrains in the grandiloquent "Going Through the Motions", and just a fragment of the middle section of "End of the Edge" can be rescued. Not much else.

After the faded album, both Livgren and bassist Dave Hope left the band to create the Christian-oriented music project 'AD', and Elefante also stepped aside to pursue music production and eventually become a musician for Christian groups. The future of Kansas was left in suspense and few were betting on their continuity.

2/2.5 stars

We had this 3 day stretch of cold last week that we haven't experienced here for many years. I actually bought a portable heater as a backup in anticipation, along with picking this album "Colder" to be my soundtrack in the deep freeze. I work in a walk in freezer a lot that is beyond cold, especially when the fans come on which is every time you walk in. So I feel somewhat prepared for weather like this.

I own 3 REDSHIFT cds, and all are live or at least partially live like 1998's "Ether". I also have 2004's "Faultline", and of course "Colder" from 2011. These last two were performances that were recorded at the Hampshire Jam 9 Festival in England. And it's unfortunate that "Colder" doesn't have Rob Jenkins and his guitar on it, as they are down to a 3 piece here of electronics. And so perhaps "colder" is a good way of describing this one when compared to the other two albums from them that I own and mentioned already.

So yes I think "Ether" is the best of the three followed by "Faultline" then this one. We get six tracks worth just under 62 minutes. There's plenty of sequencers that will come and go that are contrasted with those spacey soundscapes to great affect. I agree with the other reviewer here that this music needs to be taken as a whole, over individual tracks. So no top three or anything like that here. Sure it's all been done before but this is a band that gets a lot of respect from other electronic artists, very influential although not very original either.

Still, this is a 4 star record in my world, just not one of their best in my opinion. But thanks for the audio during those bitterly cold days and nights.