REMEMBER THE FUTURE

Returning to the progressive vein they had left aside in their rough and rudimentary "...Sounds Like This", Nektar released in the same year (1973), one of their most mature and ambitious albums, "Remember the Future", the fourth in their discography. The relationship between a blue bird from another dimension, rejected for its appearance, and a blind boy to whom it transmits visions of the past and the future, serves as a conceptual theme to develop a unique suite with the same title as the album.

Divided into two major parts and ten sections, "Remember the Future" flows in a generally gentle atmosphere, prioritising melodic and rhythmic structures with brief experimental moments, rather than their usual exuberant displays of instrumental virtuosity. After Roye Albrighton's initial lively funky guitars and the vocal chorus of "a) Images of the Past", "Part I" is highlighted by the excellent harmonies of "b) Wheel of Time" guided by Albrighton's riffs and Allan Freeman's Hammond, and the guitarist's spatial ramblings supported by the persistent wall of sound generated by Freeman's keyboards and Ron Howden's percussion on "d) Conclusion".

"Part II", while maintaining the same character as the first, has a greater musical versatility, adding elements of jazz and blues, as in the accentuated "h. Tomorrow Never Comes" or in the arpeggiated half-time of the emotive and radiant "h. Path of Light" and Albrighton's vigorous solo, pieces that converge harmonically, until reaching the final stretch of the work that returns to the initial Funky sonorities in "i) Recognition" and the counterpoint between the singer's voice and his guitar, as well as in the conclusive "j) Let It Grow", giving a very good closing to the album.

"Remember the Future", undoubtedly one of the most representative works in the career of the Hamburg-based Englishmen, reached position 19 in the US Billboard charts, being, if not the biggest, one of Nektar's biggest commercial successes.

Very good.

3.5/4 stars