ISLANDS

Formentera lady 3 A slow number, heavy on flute and piano, very reminiscent of the firts two records by the band. I like Boz Burrell´s vocals on this one, in fact, they are pretty close to Haskell. The track contains a saxophone solo, that sounds too disturbing when interfering with the main melody. It is also too long for my tastes and the screaming high vocals in this part are both nice and horrible at the same time. However, after more than a minute of it, one gets enough and even the powerful violin playing does not completely save the day. Sailor´s tale 4 After the first track fades in, we get some fine bass playing by Burrell, a powerful brass section and marvelous guitar playing from Fripp and then the sound gets enriched by other instruments again to a loud ( sometimes too noisy) culmination, after which a quiet part follows. The letters 4 The song starts off quietly with subtle singing from Burrell, but soon turns into a loud part driven by saxophone and Fripp´s guitar, after which the track calms down a bit, with Fripp and Collins providing dissonant soloing simultaneously and the song gradually slows down again and the atmosphere from its beginning returns. Toomuch chaos at atimes on here for my tastes and the soloing (while great) may be too hard to digest sometimes. Ladies of the road 5 The start is slow and quiet again, with Frip´s guitar and Burrell´s singing. Then the bass and drums join in, along with a typical solo from Mel Collins. The track gets an unexpected poppy Beatlesque vocal part as well. Fripp gets a fine guitar solo, too. Prelude: Song of the gulls 4 A lovely, melodic instrumental with lots of mellotron. Very calm. Not that great as a whole that one would feel astonished, though. Islands 2.5 Starts of as a ballad with subtle singing from Boz Burrell and subtle backing as well. The whole tune is played in this vane, with no major digressions (except for the typically "weird" ending) and while the melody is okay, it soon gets too sleepy and does not draw that muchattention to itself

Overal rating:22.5:6= 3.7= 4 STARS

EXCELLENT ADDITION TO ANY PROG MUSIC COLLECTION.