RETURN TO MINGULAY

This record has got a fine reputation from other reviewers and of course they made me curious to find out how thir record worked on me. Andy John Bradford is a British singer/songwriter who sings and seems to have written these compositions. This record "Return to Mingulay" from 2013 by Oceans 5 is 53 minutes long and is played by Andy John Bradford(vocals and 12 string guitarist), Colin Tench(guitars), Stef Flaming(bass), Victor Tassone(drums and percussion) and Marco Chiappini(keyboards). With the artwork and especially the name I had wanted more of folk in this rock.

The first track was really enjoyable. "The Mingulay Boatsong" is an old famous ballad which I like very much and this was a different version of it. The singing was traditional and I enjoyed the vocal and beside a traditional approach the additional instrumentation was progressive. Though do I prefer even more traditional versions of the song. This was unfortunately the best song of the album. That folk approach do I miss on the rest. Next track "The Whitby smugglers song" was also enjoyable and I would classify it as something as unusual as country prog. Then comes a bunch of both decent and quite boring tracks of which "Invictus Captain of my soul" is a great track, the instrumentation is praisable such as in "Fly away". I consider the tracks seven and eight the least interesting tracks.

I am glad others appreciated this record but I didn't do it very much. I like something in the concept: a prog band and a singer/songwriter but I don't find it progressive, unfortunately. The balance of progressivity wasn't in my very taste. As I wrote first track is interesting, now I'm going further to listen to something else.