For some time now, the ratings have been less and less relevant because it seems that only family and friends vote. Otherwise, it is not explained how such an 'average' album like this one gets a high rating. If it weren't for the above, I could give this album 2 stars but I feel compelled to compensate for so much 'family fervor'. In my opinion, this is a rock andaluz album that contributes very little to the dozens of excellent albums of this kind that came out in the late 70s and early 80s. if you don't know this style, there are much more noteworthy examples. if you know it well, then, this is an album for completists and the curious

"Fall On Your Own Sword" for deep-rooted prog metal, on a Threshold chiselled with a powerful riff, a rocky voice; prog metal with a groovy finale for a change from proggy archetypes. "When the World Burns" has a melancholy melodic tone, over a moving guitar arpeggio, like 'Forbidden Games'; Paul's pads resonate and give this crescendo a solemn character before the explosion of the expressive guitar solo. "High Velocity" in uptempo! Refined, punchy prog metal, a speedy instrumental with a jazzy-prog edge from the keyboards, an immersive moment demonstrating the band's intense musicality. "Start Again" for the deep ballad, bathed in sounds of Alan Parsons, Toto; light, consensual with its programmed rise and the important part played by Mick's bass on the funky finale.

"The Baron's Eyes" is interesting for its funky new-wave alternation with shimmering synths and its heavy riff, typical of Foreigner AOR. The break moves into the spheres of the progressive cosmos before returning to the lands of Riverside and prog metal bands, Symphony X or Ark with Jorn Lande, demonstrating the opening. "Fighting Force" is an uptempo instrumental surfing on powerful, melodic prog metal, with Andy's guitar in evidence for the melting marshmallow velvetiness. "Over" brings together their musical soul with a throwback to the 90s. The association of bands who tried their hand at aging prog for a sound somewhere between Ark, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Toto's heavy era.

Note the nectar guitar solo. "Blood Moon" in sound synthesis, with a metal riff to make you swoon, a rousing chorus and a tune reminiscent of many a prog band of the last few decades, including Rush. The track rises like an endless wave from Cars to Kashmiri Led Zeppelin, from backing vocals to Nightwish, and everything in between. A long cinematic fade-out with a Flash-like outro for... lightning.

Red Bazar's album is typical, burnished by the progressive red-hot iron; virtuosity, rhythm, soaring flights, mellow breaks, a melting-prog ambience creating emotion and memories. Origine on Progcensor.

— First review of this album —

In 1990, Quasar were touring on the basis of their second album, The Loreli', which had been released the previous year. The line-up at the time was Tracy Hitchings (vocals, keyboards), Toshi Tsuchiya (guitar, keyboards), Dave Wagstaffe (drums) and Keith Turner (bass, 12-string) and this recording finds them at The Noordelight in front of a very keen audience. This line-up would not last much longer with Dave joining ex-Quasar members Steve Leigh and Uwe D'Rose in the new band, Landmarq, and Tracy recording a solo album and working with Clive Nolan. Keith has continued to keep Quasar going with different musicians, both in the UK and America, and I can only hope there will be more new music soon as this is a delight.

Tracy is probably one of the finest British female singers to never truly make the big time, although she was certainly highly regarded within the progressive scene and worked with Clive Nolan for years until she moved to Australia. It was there that we got back in touch again, nearly 30 years on from when we first came across each other, and had lots of laughs together. Her death way too young impacted me a lot, so do I think this is a great release as it features rare live recordings of Tracy in her prime, and she was my friend, or is it genuinely that good?

Here we get all five tracks from the most recent album, two from the debut, plus "White Feathers" which would not appear in a studio version until the third album in 2016. I never did get to see Quasar play live, something I truly regret as this was/is a dynamic neo prog band who have always had great material, wonderful musicians and superb singers. Over the years they have had both female and male vocalists, but due to the quality of the music and songs, they can be sung by either and while this line-up was arguably hampered by not having a separate keyboard player and guitarist (Tracy was not truly what one could call a keyboard player, with Clive famously refusing to let her play live), Toshi was able to command the sound whatever he was playing. Dave is still an in-demand drummer, able to play lots of different styles, while Keith is a great bassist, fully understanding the need for different styles of attack to create emphasis, and then at the front is Tracy.

One can only wonder what would have happened if this line-up had stayed together and produced another album in short order, as this live recording is a delight from beginning to end, and something I have enjoyed immensely.

So far, this is my favourite album by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. This is a well-rounded, consistent album. It's not as maximalist and experimental as Trout Mask Replica, and neither does it lean towards a relatively approachable sound like their first album did.

Not all the songs here go for a dissonant, atonal sound like in some of their other works, and are actually listenable to even someone who goes for classic prog music, with a bit of an open mind.

It's also notable that the heavy, psychedelic, and even somewhat confrontational sound they use here was a great influence on genres like punk rock and alternative rock.

The songwriting is also outstanding. Yes, it's not something that many people will "get", and those who I've asked to listen to these songs almost always told me that these lyrics make no sense, often in a derisive way. While I don't blame people for not liking the lyrics, it must be noted that they are about the atmosphere and imagery, more than any proper meaning. The surrealism of Captain Beefheart's lyrics is almost never replicated well, and he's an amazing songwriter in a unique way. Doc at the Radar Station, like Trout Mask Replica and Bat Chain Puller, has some amazing lyrics.

My favourite songs on this album are Sue Egypt, which boasts an almost magical soundscape along with lyrical delivery that's both funny and bemusing at the same time; Brickbats, with some of the most intriguing imagery I've experienced in a song and a killer guitar riff; Telephone, that embodies technophobia and panic, and the final song, Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey on my Knee, which features heavy profanity, unlike all the other songs on the album.

This has become a record that I cannot live without, and while it's anything but approachable to a mainstream audience, it's a highly influential, varied, consistent, and really unique album.

ARCANE were an Australian band who released three studio albums from 2007 to 2015 before calling it a day. It was after this second release "Chronicles Of The Waking Dream" that vocalist Jim Grey joined a second band CALIGULA'S HORSE which was more in the Prog Metal realm than ARCANE. I had to laugh recently reading my review of ARCANE's final album from 2015 called "Known/Learned" where I mention in the opening paragraph that ARCANE sound similar to CALIGUAL'S HORSE, even the vocals. Haha, yes John they have the same singer so those vocals might sound the same. Obviously I didn't know this back in 2015 when I did that review. Oh boy.

ARCANE would break up after the mammoth "Known/Learned" where it was like albums from two different bands. A different bass player too on each side. And that second disc is full of ballads. Not my thing, and for whatever reason the band had had enough and vocalist Jim Grey would turn his complete focus now to CALIGULA'S HORSE. I prefer ARCANE. And my expectations here were low despite the very high ratings this 2009 release gets. I found out fairly quickly(2 spins in) that this record was on another level when compared to anything else by this band or the related band CALIGULA'S HORSE.

I just feel that this album is their sweet spot as it were. This clearly was the record fans loved out of the three they released. A surprisingly abundance of keyboards, even over the guitar. We get two guest female singers who add a lot, changing the flavour on two tracks. I like how they inserted these short "Silent Year" pieces(three of them) throughout this record. Besides these three short pieces we get a couple of long ones at 12 and 13 minutes respectively. There are four tracks that stood out for me so lets look at them.

First though the song "Glimpse" is a strange way to start the album as it opens with the sounds of a desperate man talking. He mentions May 26 a couple of times, and we also have a song called "May 26". The first song to really grab me was track three called "The Malice". The music and vocals get pretty intense but we get a 2 minute calm as well. "Secret" is another top four and this might be my favourite song for the guitar. Lots of piano too. The sounds of kids at recess can be heard before 6 minutes before a child sings "la la la" over and over, then it turns heavy. The atmosphere(synths) is incredible. The sound of children playing ends it.

Another top four is the next track "Fading", and at almost 12 minutes this is a ride. My final top four is the third and final interlude track called "The Third Final Year" with guest female vocals and plenty of atmosphere. May 26 is mentioned again. If you are a CALIGULA'S HORSE fan you should check this record out, this is my favourite Jim Grey vocal performance as well. Everything seems to work on this one, while with both of these bands I have had my issues with their other records. A solid 4 stars and a very enjoyable concept album.

Though listed as Jan's second album, his first with Manfred Eicher's ECM label, this is really an album of George Russell's The Esoteric Circle.

A1. "Scarabée" (6:15) kalimba, cymbals and other percussion play, long notes from a gentle saxophone, guitar chords, all building very slowly--like the discoveries in a detective spy novel. Impeccable sound rendering of music that seems to go for an effect, a setting, more than a structured song. Not the kind of musical listening experience (or even participatory experience) that I enjoy--unless in an Orff music class with the preschoolers and kindergarteners. (8.25/10)

A2. "Mah-Jong" (1:50) bass, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, chromatic and dissonant guitar notes, chords and sounds, percussive play of other stringed instruments (like autoharp?). Intro to a Beatnik sit in. (4/5)

A3. "Beast Of Kommodo" (12:30) the first song that has some structural elements that I can hook into: Arild's adherence to a steady four-chord line of bass chords, Jon Christensen's cymbal and big tom interplay, Terje Rypdal's gentle finger-plucked guitar chords (complementing Arild's bass chords until the seventh minute when the two separate), and Jan's mellifluous and innocuous sax play. Once Terje's chord play deviates from Arild's, Arild and Jon really go off into their own lands (with Jan picking up some percussion along the way). It is truly remarkable how melodic Jon Christensen's drum play is: such a master and virtuoso! The rhythm section reins themselves back in (now playing a different pattern) while Jan picks up different instruments like flute and bent sax notes and Terje begins to express more in single notes and blues-rock chords à la John Tropea and Eric Gale. Overall I find myself really liking this: more for the skills on display and non-discordant melodies the individuals choose to employ. The odd 30-second bass and flute finale is weirdly sliced onto the end for reasons I know not. (22.5/25)

B1. "Blow Away Zone" (8:35) more odd percussion work as Jon Christensen "splits himself" into half cymbalist, half tom-tom player. Terje's unconventional scraping of his guitar strings and odd striking/strumming of the non-fretted parts of his guitar strings takes the lead for a bit before Jan enters playing a crochety old bass sax with minimal care for the initial sounds he's creating. Eventually he reins it in and starts playing clearer notes and runs while Arlid's bass walks aimlessly around the fretboard, but Jan continues to mix in the scratchy, screechy atonal notes while Jon continues exploring his own Venn overlap of cymbals and toms and Terje continues playing parts of his guitar that aren't meant to play pleasant ear-charming music. Around the 6:00 minute mark every one stops to watch (I don't imagine they're drawn to listen) as Jan's screeching goes completely off the charts: sounding more like scared/dying seals, walruses, mandrills, and baboons than saxophones. Then everybody rejoins to contribute their own alien animal language inputs to bring the "song" to a close. The skill level and command of their instruments are extraordinary; the music not so much. (17/20)

B2. "MYB" (1:50) Beatnik bass, soft malleted toms and brushed snare, bent note guitar, and toneless, melody-less sax. Okay: where's the poet. (4/5)

B3. "Concentus" (0:47) like a top notch orchestra pit tuning and coming into entrainment. (4.5/5)

B4. "Afric Pepperbird" (8:00) I can definitely hear structure in this song: a set drum pattern, a melodic repeating bass line, rhythmic and melodic guitar and sax play. Overall, quite an enjoyable and image-evoking music experience. (13.5/15)

B5. "Blupp" (1:05) toms, sticks, and bird-like human-made vocal blips, all syncopated as if played by a trio of curious chimpanzees. (4.25/5)

Total Time: 41:27

As praised and acclaimed as this album is I cannot for the life of me pinpoint why--unless it is The Esoteric Circle's disdain for known forms, sounds, and structures while virtually eschewing the avant garde "free jazz" or "third stream" (perhaps expressing a little nostalgic holdover from the lost era of the Beat Generation).

C/three stars; I'm sure the musical knowledge and skill necessary to play this stuff is off the charts, but this is no music for me--and it is definitely nowhere near anything that fuses "rock 'n' roll" with "jazz" music!

After falling in love with their 2022 studio album release, The Quiet Rebellion of Compromise, the Norwegian quartet's third album, I have been waiting with great anticipation to see what might follow. My hopes are raised further by the knowledge that the band's membership remains the same since guitarist Stephan Hvinden joined the founding trio for 2018's False Memory Archive.

1. "No Such Place" (6:06) strumming acoustic guitars, loud snare drum, and Simen Valldal Johannessen's deep crooning voice makes for a welcome and comfortable sound--like something by Richie Havens or John Martyn. A solid, quite likeable song--even with the uncredited soprano sax. I especially like the clear out at 4:45 for solo arpeggiated guitar before slowly bringing the band back together to finish. (9/10)

2. "London" (4:20) good music that opens with some cool odd sounds and then moves into an insidious, relentless motif that takes a few measures to establish itself before Simen joins in with his vocal. The sound palette is pretty cool, especially with the creative guitar sounds and play, and a cool chorus, and some powerful STEVEN WILSON /PORCUPINE TREE-like territory to the song's end. (9.125/10)

3. "Run Into the Sun" (5:34) a weave of muted/compressed instruments provide the base for Simen to sing. It's a fairly standard song that is based a progression of four chords; it truly sounds as if it could come from a ROBBIE ROBERTSON or Richard Thompson album. Nice but definitely nothing groundbreaking (especially without access to the message of the lyrics). (8.75/10)

4. "Shimmer" (7:36) moving further into the world of distorted perception, Simen gives another powerful Jon Ivar Kollbotn (Major Parkinson) (verses)/Mark Hollis (chorus)-like vocal performance. Uncredited soprano saxophone solo appears briefly in the first half of the fourth minute. Though guitar starts the song out, this is another piano-based composition--as evidenced by the extended soft-jazzy piano solo playing out from the fifth minute to the end. Again, how Mark Hollis like! (13.375/15)

5. "Shapeshifter" (7:58) another song whose opening reminds me of Ivar Bjørnson & Einar Selvik's 2018 Viking Folk masterpiece, Hugsjá, but then deep bass and drums join Simen in the second minute to give it a more insistent, urgent feel, almost metal-like. The wonderful tom-tom play sounds quite electronic (and why not?) while the instrumental fifth minute relies mostly on MIDIed electric piano layers before the toms and bass rejoin. Cool to have the toms acting as the "lead" instrument (as it turns out, not unlike Nick Mason's roto-tom work in Dark Side of the Moon's "Time." The layered vocal "chant" work in the seventh minute is cool--it leads into Stephan Hvinden's finest moment on the album with a searing electric guitar solo to take us to the the instrumental final moments. Very good song. (13.5/15)

6. "Borders" (6:24) more drum and bass lead-ins before PT/SW guitar power strums take us into the main motif. Piano- based with some programmed-sounding tracks (percussive in nature) in the weave leads to a heavy chorus with Simen's urgent vocals and some Viking choral phrases as well while the instruments ramp up their volume and noise. With the fourth minute the band presents some brief divergent passages to alternate with the power chorus: tuned percussion, piano, Mellotron, muted "background" drums, all carrying forward the main melody only in a softer, more minimalist weave. At 5:45 the heavier passage returns but sans vocals: only guitars, piano, and jaunty rhythm section. Interesting but nothing to write home about. (8.75/10)

7. "Sensory Overload" (8:12) bled over from the previous song, the same instrumental sound palette continues but the vocal performance is very different: there sounds to be either multiple vocalists or multiple tracks performed by Simen on which he transforms his voice credibly in several different ways. The tripart weave is remarkable but unfortunately, it fails to live up to what it seems to promise: fails to develop into anything more elevated or interesting. An instrumental mid-section explores keyboard electronica with some more creative drum pounding turns psycho-political with arrival of SEVEN IMPALE-like "saxophones" and then death metal growls. Not what we were expecting! And then crescendo and space-drone to end it all. (13.5/15)

Total Time 46:13

The music is still as melodic and accessible (and creative sonically) as their previous album (which I loved) but I feel as if there is less risk, less creative ideas being tried out on this one.

B+/4.5 stars; another excellent album of refreshingly creative music from one of Norway's up-and-coming artists. Definitely a band to keep following!

The ninth installment in Gazpacho's studio discography is the album 'Molok', originally released in 2015 on Kscope, a daring conceptual record that dares to pose the profound question about the existence (or non-existence) of God. And while the album itself does not give any definite answers, it uses this thematic thread in order to build around it the story of a man's journey who conceived and subsequently builds a machine that has the capacities to simulate the beginnings of time, with the machine named after the Biblical demon Molok, whose name brings along the ritual of child sacrifice. The story is rather intriguing, inventive and ingenious, and fits perfectly the bizarrely eclectic and strangely ordered world of Gazpacho, a band that has always been able to defy categorizations and stride forward with a pace of their own, drawing in a crowd of introspective devotees, as one might assume.

Needless to say, 'Molok' bolsters the band's signature art rock style that combines elements of neo-prog, folk rock, worldbeat, and alternative music - quite a fascinating mixture of styles that has served the band well, and while this album goes into a lighter direction, it remains one of the most focused, enriching, eclectic and expressive releases of the Norwegian rockers. Opening track 'Park Bench' immediately impresses with its abstract, minimal arrangements, which unfold into a full-blown chamber pop piece that takes equal amounts of inspiration from Marillion and Radiohead. 'The Master's Voice' is a lovely art rock number with quite a subtle sound design, while the third track 'Bela Kiss' plays around with some folk tropes, despite working as a straightforward pop song. Six-minute-long mini-suite 'Know Your Time', explores the more atmospheric side of Gazpacho's music, with the next song expanding upon its mood, flow and tempo, almost like a coda. 'ABC' is a more upbeat entry with a cheerfully soothing chorus, a bit like something you would expect to hear on a Coldplay album (with all the sadness included, of course). Around the album's end 'Algorithm' works as a fine interlude and introduces a touch of worldbeat to the album, while 'Alarm' only seems to pass by, giving way to the closing track 'Molok Rising', a 10-minute post-rock journey encapsulating Gazpacho's signature blend of neo-progressive writing with strands of folk and world music, definitely an ambitious and essential piece of atmospheric rock from this Norwegian group. And the entire 'Molok' album is an excellent excursion into their musical world, offering a beautifully chilling collection of songs, a work that brings together several essential elements of their past and ties them together into a very provocative but also endearing concept, which is what progressive music is all about after all.

Rick tells us a story

Many great musicians shine brightest when they're part of a band. Rick Wakeman is definitely one of them. With Yes, he sounds absolutely incredible?his compositions and the chemistry he shares with the rest of the group are unmatched. But on his own, Wakeman's solo career has always felt? uneven. Ambitious, yet but not always convincing.

Personally, I think his strongest solo efforts are The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1973), White Rock (1977), and certain parts of The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1975). Beyond those, a lot of his work feels repetitive, like variations on the same formula that don't quite land.

And it makes you wonder, how is it that someone as talented and celebrated as Rick Wakeman doesn't have a more consistent solo discography, In many ways, he seems to coast on the fame he built as a session musician for legends like David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, and Cat Stevens, and of course, as a key figure in the golden era of Yes.

But there's one album one live album where everything comes together: Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974). This is Wakeman at his best, fulfilling all the promise of his talent and vision. Inspired by Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, which he saw as a child with his father, Wakeman set out to create a full-length composition with narration, orchestra, band, and choir. It was a massive undertaking, and his first time writing lyrics something he admitted was far outside his comfort zone and had to rewrite from scratch due to a lack of confidence.

Rather than just blending rock and classical sounds for effect, Wakeman envisioned each element playing its proper role giving the music real depth and dynamic contrast. With help from Wil Malone and Danny Beckerman, who translated Wakeman's musical ideas into orchestral and choral arrangements (despite Beckerman having no orchestral experience!), the result was a vibrant, symphonic journey. The full composition was originally 55 minutes long, but had to be trimmed to 40 to fit on a single LP. It's structured in four parts: "The Journey," "Recollection," "The Battle," and "The Forest" which cheekily ends with a snippet of Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King.

Armed with Mini Moogs, Mellotrons, grand pianos, and organs, Wakeman delivers a performance that captures him at his creative peak, not just as a player, but as a composer and arranger as well.

The live premiere itself was as grand as the music. Two back-to-back sold-out shows, each with 3,000 in attendance. The guest list included the likes of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, Peter Sellers, Steve Howe, and several British politicians. The evening began with classical pieces, humorous interludes, and three tracks from Six Wives, including a comedic piano segment accompanied by Laurel and Hardy footage. There was even a whimsical encore, the Pearl and Dean Piano Concerto, made up of old TV commercial jingles. It was weird, wonderful, and very Wakeman.

Of course, not everything went perfectly. Wakeman famously had to buy tickets from scalpers for his own parents. Narrator David Hemmings performed with a black eye after a domestic mishap, which Wakeman's wife disguised with makeup. Still, Hemmings seated on a throne with the script in his lap delivered a theatrical flair that elevated the whole production. Interestingly, Wakeman's first choice for narrator was Richard Harris, but when he couldn't do it, Hemmings stepped in during a chance meeting and offered himself on the spot.

Despite the scale and success of the concert, the planned filming for a home video never happened. Wakeman skipped the post-show party exhausted, asleep in the car on the way home.

In the end, Journey to the Centre of the Earth is everything you could hope for from Rick Wakeman: dramatic, melodic, wildly ambitious, and entirely unique. It's his crowning achievement a blend of electronic and acoustic textures, bold storytelling, and symphonic grandeur. Nothing else he's done, solo or with Yes, quite matches it. A one-of-a-kind masterpiece.

Before I talk about the album itself, I would like to clarify a certain term that came to mind after listening several times to the latest, second album by the Italian band Living Stilts entitled "A Child", which was released a month ago but has only just reached me now.

You have probably come across the term "concept album" more than once or twice while listening to various records, both progressive and semi-progressive. And this term can probably also be useful in the case of other types of music. It can be somehow adapted to albums on which "(...) there are songs that have a common theme or, arranged in a specific order, tell a story, and the cover and artwork of the album are related to the main theme of the album". I have allowed myself to quote one of the popular definitions here, not at all meaning that it is the only infallible one. It captures the spirit of what I mean. Many albums are not a random collection of songs, they are not musically glued together in a more or less successful way. Many of them, as the definition suggests, attempt to draw the listener into a certain presented world that is not limited to one piece, does not "fit" into one piece, but rather fluidly leads us through (sometimes complex) musical or narrative structures creating stories, histories, descriptions or what is often referred to as a suite. Somewhere in all this we should place the rock opera, which combines sounds with sung words to create moving musical performances that can almost be "seen" while listening. Theatricality comes to the fore here, to which all the rest is subordinated ? the music, the way of arrangement, the way of performance. The whole thing is to create something that I will allow myself to call a "listening spectacle". And that is exactly what the album "A Child" is. It is a listening spectacle, which by its power not only evokes some musical associations and references. It is a record, which with its sound forces the listener to create certain, almost theatrical, images and roles. This is a release that is a ready template for showing the story told on the theatre stage. The way the text and music are treated brings to mind the works of Bertolt Brecht, often performed by musical theatres all over the world. By musical theatres. On the album, the band creates such a musical, listening spectacle, which allows those who are willing to go on an incredible musical and verbal journey. All the arrangements are subordinated to the "spectacularity" of the presented music. Of course, if the term from the field of theatre art can be applied to music, as I allowed myself to do above.

Living Stilts is a musical project conceived by composer Luca Mavilie with the intention of creating evocative sounds and allowing the listener to go on musical and verbal journeys. Their songs are inspired by fantastic, more imaginative art, fiction, poetry and everything that allows them to achieve their intended goal - to tell a story in an almost theatrical way. The music is influenced by many things, coming from progressive rock, hard rock, romantic classical music, baroque, renaissance and what is called Rock Progressivo Italiano.

The action of the latest album takes place in the imaginary American village of Pinesville somewhere in the seventies. Here, a young boy witnesses the mayor molesting a girl with mental disorders. The girl is the daughter of a single mother living in poverty. People in the village believe that she was conceived by the devil and that is why she is different. Many adults sexually molest her, taking advantage of her uncontrollable behavior until she becomes pregnant with the mayor, and her mother tells her to have an abortion. Although she is an adult, the girl remains a child in her development. The boy returns from the forest wounded and does not talk about what happened. A sanctimonious priest, who sees sin everywhere, is secretly attracted to the girl, considering her pure and naive. At the same time, believing that she is a gift from the Lord, not a punishment from the devil. The girl becomes his obsession. On the rocks in the forest, people find strange drawings and messages referring to some of the secrets of the village. A farmer finds a goat with a cut throat and blames "evil worshippers". The priest begins accusing various people, one by one, until he incites a mass riot. He accuses the African American children living in the village of beating up a boy, which prompted the citizens to burn down one of their houses. Later, she accuses the newcomers who do not integrate with the rest of the village, because they are hippies accused of worshiping evil. The village doctor, who knows what really happened, openly attacks the mayor, accusing him of the shameful act of exploiting the girl. However, the mayor is defiant and defends himself, saying that everyone in the village is a sinner. The girl tells her story and says how her father abandoned her and her mother because she was different. When the boy tries to tell the other children what he saw in the forest, he is beaten by the mayor's son so that people will not believe him. The girl's mother accuses her of ruining her life; because of her differentness, her husband left her. She confesses to the priest, telling him the story and tells him that she ordered the village doctor to perform an abortion. When the priest discovers the truth about the girl he idealized, he becomes furious, convincing himself that she is really the daughter of the devil and that it was the evil in her that attracted and corrupted others. He knows that many villagers are involved in this story and carries out a massacre during a village festival by poisoning the participants with wine. Only the girl survives because she does not drink wine. Isn't this a ready-made scenario for a play?

Musically, this scenario is written out over ten tracks, which are characterized by the complete subordination of music to the content conveyed. As it was once said: music is the background for the story being told, which of course does not mean that it is bland. On the contrary, this way of treating it forced the band to arrange and perform it more carefully, which can be heard in every minute of each song.

"Trampled Flowers" - the first of the tracks is, in terms of content, the beginning of the spectacle we are listening to. In terms of music, thanks to the specific sound of the organ, it is a good example of the sounds of the sixties and, interestingly, I would not see any similarity to the progressive music of that period, but rather to the sound of The Doors with a slightly different-sounding vocal maintained in the higher registers. Although of course the synthesizers appearing about halfway through and the slightly hard-rock-sounding guitar at the end modernize the whole arrangement.

In the second track, "Reverend Warren", rock dominates, and the guitar with stronger chords emphasizes the narrative nature of the composition at the beginning, which, as time passes, transforms into a song typical of the sixties. We have a similar sound in the track "Dig In The Ground". Guitar and organ. "Black Fire", telling about accusations against African-American villagers, in order to strengthen the message, begins with the playing of an acoustic guitar that sounds very bluesy. Sounds reminiscent of the so-called delta blues. And only the keyboards heard somewhere in the background bring to mind progressive arrangements.

"Strangers" - a guitar-based, hippie-like beginning of a story about "outsiders", about those newcomers, not ours, who (as is often the case in such situations) are to blame for everything. We are still in the sixties, and the simple guitar solo played with single notes is reminiscent of bands from those years.

To describe the song "Punishment Of A Noteworthy Citizen" one could say that it is half The Alan Parsons Project stripped of its musical ornaments and half the melodic, albeit slightly hard rock, sounds of the sixties.

The brass band at the beginning and in the middle of the song "The Girl Of The Stolen Sun" makes the combination of the story about the girl's mother with the simple playing of the electric guitar, which "comes to life" and speeds up towards the end, give the whole thing an incredible, slightly fairy-tale and at the same time hard rock sound.

The short, three-minute track "Forget What You Saw" is an arrangement of organs that sound , of course like those from the sixties.

The penultimate track on the album - "A Drink Of Faith" is the closest to what you can hear on progressive bands' records today. Strong, guitar-synthesizer sound, slightly prog-metal vocals.

If you still think that there is a lack of evidence to support the thesis of the theatricality of this performance, please listen to the last track on this album ? "The Puppet Massacre". Delicate piano, sounds of rain and thunder, over two minutes of instrumental beginning, final guitar chords. Very progressive, gentle and melodic piece of music. Melodic and atmospheric summary of the whole.

Although the band Living Stilts was formed in 2014 and recorded their first album entitled "Shipwreck", it was not until 2025 that they released their next album. It took some time for Alberto Abate (guitar and vocals), Francesco Girone (bass), Luca Mavilia (keyboards) and Alfredo Cassotta (drums) to prepare the album "A Child". Is it a good album? It is not up to me to give an assessment here. This is a different album compared to this year's music productions. It is a "listening spectacle" and I will insist on this, perhaps not entirely accurate, description, which (in my opinion) captures the spirit of this album. It is a musical story in which all the arrangement and vocal means are subordinated to telling the story of a girl living somewhere in the imaginary village of Pinesville. If someone is looking for an album that goes towards creating a musical spectacle, this album is definitely worth recommending.