TRESPASS

Finally a very positive Genesis review...

I owned this record for quite some time now, but until a month ago I hadn't listened to it seriously. Realizing this might be some interesting album (follow-up Nursery Cryme is my favourite Genesis) I took some time to get into the music and what a relief this was. Finally a Genesis record with drums I like! Somehow I'm the only one who is really disturbed by the inaccurate and awful recorded drums of Phil Collins. On Trespass John Mayhew plays drums and it really suits the music fine. Whilst he might not be as technical as Collins, his sound is ten times better. Only on the Knife some of his drum-patterns are a bit dull, but this is still acceptable.

This album is considered to be the first 'real' Genesis album, because of the totally different début. Everything is there: the dreamy symphonic soundscapes, the intelligent instrumental passages, the Hackettish upper-element guitar sound and ofcourse the lyrics and vocals of mister Peter Gabriel. His vocals sound particularly well on this album as he sings intimate, aggressive and angelic. The compositions on the album are not as complicated as on Nursery Cryme, but don't be mistaken: this is still better then 95% of all symphonic prog around! The chord progressions are with the recognisable modulations, giving it that magical harmonic sophisticated sound.

Side one has three songs of exactly seven point zero zero minutes, side two has two longer tracks of almost nine minutes and one shorter track of four minutes, which could be seen as the hit-potential song. This is no record with stand-out tracks: all tracks are of high quality, memorable and I would want to miss one of them. As said the shorter track could have been considered radio friendly, but this is no ordinary pop-song: this is still top-notch prog with acoustic arrangements and nice tension-building in the refrain. The final track The Knife is the fastest song on the album and has that nice up-tempo prog feel. The Knife is the most spectacular (not per se best) song on the album and it wouldn't have been a misfit on Nursery Cryme or Foxtrot.

Conclusion. This album is one big promising victory march. It is one of the most important and innovative prog-albums of the seventies. Genesis found a great formula which would be perfected on the next album. A very very big four stars for Trespass.

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