WESTERN CULTURE

I know that this is supposed to be a really important album in the history of RIO, but I must stop short of calling it a masterpiece. First of all, I miss Dagmar, her singing really hooked me into A Praise of Learning. In addition, I like LegEnd because of its jazzy undercurrents. Western Culture, after giving it 4 or 5 spins, still bores me. There is nothing here that really gets me riled up. As in the case of King Crimson's Islands, I would say that this album suffers from a situation that makes it good in theory, but just lacking in execution. Although I would recommend it to any person becoming familiar with RIO, I am not sure it's going to be enjoyed by others.