COMA DIVINE

FIVE BIG STAR for this live performance album! I woke up this morning and didn't know why I grabbed this CD that I had couple years ago (I think around 1998?) and played it loud at my NAD player and B&W speaker set. Wow! It cheers my day man. This live album is damn damn terrific!!! You should not let yourself not having this album in your prog collection. I mean it!

It was my friend, Andy Julias, the Chairman of Indonesian Progressive Society (IPS), who introduced me to this album from the band that (poor me!) I had never known before. To my big surprise, this band blew my mind! Their sound is wonderful! I could not succeed to label this band under what kind of music they played, or even the "alike" of any band I've ever heard. I guessed it was Floyd-alike, but no no no . they have their own identity and I salute them for this because their music is really different. Definitely they are not sort of mainstream rock music. Whatever, they are great! I don't mind people call this band plays "derivatives", the fact is they are great!

My rating for this album goes this way: ***** for musicianship, ****** for music composition, ****** for sound production and ***** for performance. I think I follow the criteria used by PROGRESSION magazine. (For those of you who read this magazine, you know what I mean). So, that's what make up a FIVE BIG STAR for this album. For those of you wanting to know more detail of this album and "how I feel about it", you may want to read the detail below. But if not, just buy the CD. I bet you will love it! Have a great time!

The album is opened by a noisy, uplifting, and high energy instrumental with lead guitar as the main instrument backed up by spacey keyboard sound. It's really nice opening. When the CD reaches track 3 and 4 "Waiting Phase One and Two" this is where I first came to my orgasm about the music of the band. It's so simple, melody-wise. But it creates strong musical nuances that bring you an experience of another life that you never imagined before. True, this is not an exaggeration, it's a reality. All musicians play excellently in these two tracks. The guitar playing and vocal of Steven Wilson are both marvelous. The other noticeable thing in "Waiting" series is the very nice percussion, both . the play and the sound. Top class! Bass playing is also dominant. I have a habit of playing this two tracks as loudly as possible and getting louder at the interlude when guitar sound and bass backed by very dynamic drum playing come together harmoniously. Oh man . this piece of music is really really wonderful!!!

"The Sky Moves Sideways" opened with a very mellow intro and flows naturally to another piece of more upbeat music. It requires patience in listening to this intro. Yeah, patience and patience! But it's OK as you have just done with relatively energetic music of "Waiting" series. Then enters the guitar part and the music starts to uplift a little bit. Steven Wilson voice enters nicely here at around minutes 3:35 "We lost the skyline ." backed by spacey keyboard. Nice entrance, Steve! Having finished with the firs vocals then the guitar enters nicely again. Oh my God .what a terrific segment here! And then at around minutes 7:45 the dynamic bass guitar comes into play followed by nice percussion and backed by spacey keyboard. Here we go, you don't need patience anymore as the music goes uplifting now. It's so energetic with solo keyboard. The ending part of this track closed nicely with guitar as lead combined with other instruments altogether. Top notch music!

"Dislocated Day" is an upbeat music with dominant bass playing. I don't need to elaborate any further as this track is really excellent. "The Sleep of No Dreaming" is another nice track starts mellow and continues into more energetic music. Observe how Wilson sings this part "The Sleep of no dreaming ." followed by his lead guitar. Very nice. Observe also the drumming style of this track. Cool. By the way, almost in every track there must be "strange sounds" produced either by guitar or keyboard. The sounds create great nuances of Porcupine Tree and I guess that this has become their musical identity.

The rest of three tracks "Moonloop", "Radioactive Toy" and "Not Beautiful Anymore" are all excellent tracks that don't require further review. Marvelous! The only thing that I wanna mention is the piece at the opening of "Radioactive Toy" when Steven starts communicating with the audience and followed by clapping from the audience. It's great!

To conclude, I think this album is MUST HAVE for prog lovers. The other thing that impresses me is the excellent sonic quality of this recording. I have never heard any live recording sonic quality better than this one. What do you think? - Gatot Widayanto, Indonesia.