A STREET BETWEEN SUNRISE AND SUNSET

At the same time as studying Drifting Sun, I'm gonna blow through the four Satellite albums. Now I found out after starting this debut that this was formed out of the prior band, Collage, so I probably should've started with Collage. Having said that, the opening 13-minute epic had parts that nearly made my jaw drop. I did NOT want to put that off, so that one song convinced me to check out Collage after hearing the four Satellite albums. Even in 2003, neo-prog compositions like that have very surprising, down right assaulting moments that twist your expectations. This made me look forward to the next track, a 15-minute epic. And while it was damn good, it wasn't as surprising as before and even too long. Should've been 8 minutes at the shortest. There was much less reason to worry about that afterwards. I wanted to see what they were capable of with shorter tracks. The five-minute Midnight Show is romantic, acoustics driven, softer and much more careful. It's serenity is lush and complicated, but extremely accessible. It immediately follows up with an extremely progressive burst of energy known as No Disgrace, displaying hyper melodic energy rivaling that of a Mozart opera at the same time as some perfectly-placed psychedelics. This came close to making my jaw drop yet again.

The fear of "overlength" came back once the ten minute "Now" came into play. It didn't even spend one minute on an intor before entering the first verse. But its first instrumental solo was new, interesting, inspired and unique to the rest of the album. It's careful but effective violin drive made a perfect yin to the excessive drumming in the background's yang. Remember what I said about a Mozart opera? Well, this is where that behavior comes into full force, especially where the experienced drummer and founding member Wojciech Szadkowski is concerned (if I may digress for a moment, I didn't copy-paste that). At the time, I decided that this was the finest neo-prog track I had ever heard. Next was the 4-minute Fight, which is one of the much poppier tracks that has a nice, simple vocal melody but another complex orchestra driving total pop force into maximum activity while maintaining the adult contemporary serenity. The final epic is the title track, which builds itself on slow-building drama, nice bongos and Floydian guitars before letting some calming electronics take over and eventually bringing out more energy at a very careful pace. The instrumental magic keeps increasing as it goes along, turning into something Pendragon might wish they came up with. And finally, it ends with Children, which takes me right into a walk through a forest with its tribal percussions. Once again, there's a complex, multi-instrumental backdrop that works perfectly and ends the album on one final burst of raw magic, but in the most beautiful and charming song so far. That includes the cricket sounds.

This album almost completely justified its length and the single-genre mentality by steering just enough into the variety that neo-prog allows without crossing over the line. This is a rarity, really. The only issue is the length of On the Run. I'd say this magical and brilliantly thought out experience in prog capabilities is on the same league as Marillion's Seasons End, which is my pick for the best Marillion album. Obviously, the experience the drummer had with Collage panned out perfectly. Many of these tracks reach neo-prog perfection.

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