VOYAGER

Kenny Mitchell describes himself as "an independent rock musician who was born and raised in Glasgow and is now based in the North East of England. He currently has four album releases, all of which can be found on his Bandcamp page. This review is for his 2013 album release "Voyager"

At slightly over 50 minutes, this album contains only two instrumental tracks, each of which runs at slightly over 25 minutes.

Entitled simply Voyager Part 1 and Voyager Part 2, both tracks follow roughly the same compositional format with each track providing an epic scope of richly textured and somewhat retro styled melodic progressive rock. In many places the album is something of a blend of Pink Floyd meets Camel, but also has elements of Rush, Yes and 1970s Genesis/Steve Hackett.

Mr Mitchell plays all the instruments on this album himself and is an obviously talented and clever individual, engineering the recording work and producing the album completely on his own, even down to the cover design and album artwork. Acoustic and electric guitars as well as fretted and fretless bass are featured throughout. Lushly textured retro keyboard and synth sounds as well as acoustic piano are also well represented on the album

Acoustic guitar passages - in both 12 and 6 string mode - are fairly prominent during the course of the entire album, along with a diverse variety of electric guitar passages in which Mitchell quite obviously tips his hat to a number of his own guitar heroes and influences with some fairly tasteful and soaring lead guitar work liberally sprinkled throughout.

Each track has been divided up into titled sections which blend seamlessly into one another and provide a landscape of occasionally recurring themes which help to provide structure and continuity throughout. The album winds up as it begins, using the same 12 string guitar idea as is used in the opening and is quite fittingly subtitled "The end is the beginning"

Some people may find the length of these tracks a little difficult to deal with as it's always something of a tall order and a fairly big ask to make the listener commit to actually sitting down for 25 minutes just to listen to one track - or 50 minutes for the whole 2 track album - but, if like me you love long epics such as 'Hemispheres' , 'Close to the Edge", 'Suppers Ready' , 'The Revealing Science of God' , or more recently "A change of Seasons" and "Octavarium" then you will surely enjoy this album. I recommend it highly for your collection.