WINDOW DRESSING

This fourth TILES album comes five years after their last achievement "Presents Of Mind". And they changed quite a lot since that period. They started of as a more AOR oriented band. "Presents Of Mind" took them in the soft progmetal direction and the new album sounds a lot heavier but can still be catalogued as progmetal.

The album was mixed by Terry Brown (RUSH, IQ, FATES WARNING) and the artwork was designed by Hugh Syme (ARENA, MEGADETH, RUSH), who also plays some keyboards on "Slippers In The Snow". It takes a lot of courage to open your album with the longest, most complex and most difficult track or should I rather consider it a bad move? It's not easy to digest this first track when you hear this CD for the first time. But if you keep on listening to it, it grows into a great epic. As often, persistence pays off.

"Window Dressing" has 4 different parts. It opens with a heavy riff, changes into a quiet electric melodic piece with a complex rhythm, goes back to a heavier vocal part and ends with an acoustic quiet passage. Well, in my opinion it should have ended here, because it felt like the end, but they preferred to return to the first part again. But that doesn't change the fact that this is a great epic 17 minutes progmetal track.

"Remember To Forget" or "All She Knows" would have been better album openers. They are a lot easier to get into. The first contains a very catchy guitar riff and the other has a great vocal line. The line "eyes that sparkle" echoes through your head for a long time.

Paul is a great vocalist. He sounds a bit like Geddy Lee in the higher regions. The whole band often sounds a bit like RUSH, undoubtedly partly due to the mixing of Terry Brown.

"Capture The Flag" is a perfect example of this RUSH sound, without losing their own identity, they got after four albums. "Tear-Water Tea", an acoustic ballad with some brilliant violin playing, is a good recipe for a special drink. Beautiful vocals.

As on their previous album, they present some short instrumentals: "Stop Gap", a chaotic jazzy track, "Unicornicopia", a classical oriented piano and violin piece (although it's constantly disturbed by strange noises) and "A.02" a short acoustic guitar piece. These tracks add up to the already omnipresent variation on the album. "Spindrift" is the heaviest track. It doesn't really fit in with the rest of the tracks, although it contains the best (too short) guitar solo of the album.

I like this album a lot but I prefer their previous album that contained some softer progmetal. Of course, this opinion can change in time, as I had 5 years to get into "Presents Of Mind". The special edition comes with a bonus live CD from the support-tour they did in 1999 for DREAM THEATER. You can also buy special editions of their first three albums. >>> Review by Danny (8,5/10) <<<