NO POCUS WITHOUT HOCUS

Can Murky Red be labelled as "prog"? Obviously! This album has been made in the good old tradition of "Good music". Before genres and labels ruined a good idea and effectively narrowed the imaginary rules for great bands. "Sweet Dark Hypnosis" has no similarity to "Elena" for example. Why should it? The album varies from sounding like the Doors, to Sabbath & even Floyd. It wanders into "true" Progressive (not for radio) and then there are the lyrics! They are completely crazy when they feel like doing that. I am no fan of airy fairy lyrics. I like silly ones. They stand out when they are clever and they certainly are here. This brings back memories of when The Beatles, Stones, Zep, Purple, Tull etc etc, kept us all guessing what they would do next. They broke the commercial rules and it was fun. All of that proved, in time, to be commercial after all. Just look at the reviews of all that old stuff here on PA! Unfortunately, that approach ended many years ago in the commercial world and sadly, even for prog! Murky Red fit perfectly in that family of bands that made music for fun. Let me call it "Prog for the people" Let me state that I am Colin Tench and I mixed this album, so yes I am involved. The music is not mine and most of it, not even close to what I play or listen to most of the time. This review is very real and I didn't try to write it until I re-listened to it, months after it was completed, without mixing in mind. I mixed but did NOT create the sound. That is all Murky Red. First reason for this 5 star rating is that is sounds "nice". Nice???????? Yes it does. I seem to be in a minority of people who can't stand modern extreme compression on most music. It destroys the friendly sound and balance that naturally occurs in any noise made by acoustic and electric instruments and more importantly, drums. No Pocus without Hocus has a warm, real sound created by Stef Flaming in his choice of instruments percussion and combination thereof, so of course it takes me back to the 60s/70s. I rarely review anything and again, that is because I hate music made loud by limiting and massive compression. It sounds great for a while then I turn it off due to the harshness or even nastiness and wonder why an amazing album has yet again, been made un-listenable to me. To give a reference, my favourite albums of 2015 are Hand Cannot Erase, Story Tellers pt 1 and No Pocus without Hocus. None of them are perfect but all of them are outstanding musically and sonically. Rare indeed!