REMEMBER THE FUTURE

Although it enjoys an enviable reputation, I have to say that I don't think Remember the Future is in the top tier of Nektar's albums. Taking a leaf from Jethro Tull's book, the group try to stretch a song across an entire album, only for a lack of material to become evident - by the last couple of minutes the song descends into fairly pedestrian hard rock, and the rest of the album just doesn't have the richness or diversity of Thick as a Brick, or even A Passion Play. The band's symphonic masterpiece would come later in the form of the brilliant first side of Recycled, but Remember the Future finds them not quite there yet, and could have done with an editing pass to trim back the filler.