ISLANDS

Islands is simply a fine addition to your prog collection. It covers the more classical oriented prog, while maintaining a sense of progressive rock. This album requires some patience, as it is slow, but nicely so.

Formentera Lady starts with a nice contrabass taking you right away into the classical atmosphere. Soon joined with some nice flute, and completed with the neat singing voice. Sadly, this part takes too long. After about 3 minutes, the song starts to take off with the brilliant jazzy drums starting off somewhat timidly, but getting better throughout the album. Take care to listen to the brilliant piano improvising. In the next part, there are some nice acoustic guitar parts, showcasing Fripp's prowess on guitar once more. This part is also a bit too long. The end of the song shows some brilliant improvisational parts though.

Sailor's Tale is my second favourite on the album, starting off with funky drums, joined soon by guitar and saxophone. The guitar solo part here fits veryw ell into the song, leading into a climax that is very nice, with a few of the instruments playing a somewhat higher note beautifully fitting into the rythmical motif. The saxophone solo is amazing, as I'm used to from Mel Collins. The song starts off into a groovy laidback part next, featuring Fripp's blazing on guitar. His melodic and rythmical difference from the bass and drums here are brilliant, but the repetition is somewhat boring. Suddenly this part picks up speed, followed with some orchestral backing, and the drums improvising very well. All in all a nice song, though somewhat repetitive.

The Letters begins with singing and really birlliant acoustic guitar work again. This part is very emotionally encouraging, if you listen closely to the guitar gently picking continuously alternating melodies. Suddenly an explosion of music! Well done here KC! this is what prog is about! After this the song takes back to a more mellow part, with all of the band members showing that they make music like it's supposed to be, complex, virtuous and well within the general feeling of the song.

The Ladies of the Road is my favourite song, though it is very repetitive. The bass and drums are very funky in this song, with great saxophone playing in the beginning. The singer does a good job on this song, showing some emotions worked into his voice. The chorus is wonderfully soft, with the high guitar sound and the second voices. These parts repeat, which is a pity, I really feel they could have made so much out of this song. At the end of the song a wonderful sax solo enters, showing Mel at work once more.

The Song of the Gulls is a beautiful classical part, leading into Islands quite well. As with most of this album, the song is too long, and too repetitive for it's length. The fact that it is classical doesn't matter that much, as it's wonderful in combination with the rest of the album. It leads into Islands quite well, with the melodies resembling in the beginning of Islands. Islands is a very sadness inducing song at first, with it's slow rythym, descending flute playing(or is that another windinstrument?). Also, as in South Side of the Sky's bridge part, the pianos do a wonderful part in creating the beautiful atmosphere. After this part, a lone saxophone plays, the emptiness of it all adding to the sad atmosphere. Then the vocals-flute-piano part repeat, with a violin in there instead of the flute. After this an uptaking part starts reminding me of Chelsea from the Counting Crows. Nice and beautiful it is, were it not too long, you wait and wait until the climax comes, after which the sax trails dissappointingly off in another direction.

If you wait for a while when the song ends, a sort of bonus part comes containing some playing byt the orchestra and people saying stuff in the background.

If you like strings arrangements, are into classical, or like softer more careful prog, instilling emotions of beauty in you, you'll like Islands very much. I find it to be beautiful in it's softness, and emptiness. Then again, the album IS repetitive and takes too long to change melody and rythym throughout the songs, there isn't as much evolution in there as other progalbums. I'm therefor inclined to give it three stars, but seeing as it has another approach, leaning more on softer playing, and it differs from everything else, I'll give it four since this way, it complements any prog collection very nicely!