HOOKED ON PHONICS

The seventh Mutiny in Jonestown studio album starts out very strong with the first four songs taking up half the album. Before discussing the songs, we first have to look at the most revolutionary change in the bands sound palette on this album and every one going forward. It was called an Emu Vintage Keys. Emu had been building samplers for years and was considered the industry leader in this technology. Rather than creating yet another sampler where the user would provide the sound source to sample and emulate an instrument, the Vintage Keys appeared. What made it so special was Emu collected all the instruments and did the sampling themselves. The Vintage Keys was focused on providing excellent samples of 70's keyboards long lost to time. This was a prog keyboardists dream come true and the first instrument I know of to include an accurately sampled mellotron. From here on out, the band was able to fulfill a long time goal of including excellent quality mellotron choir, strings, brass, and flute into their sound palette. The Vintage Keys also did provided sounds of many other 70's keyboards, but I could have cared less about that?Mutiny in Jonestown finally had a mellotron!

Back to the songs. Of these first four that open the album, the highlights are "Lost in Time" with it's extended lead synthesizer solo in the middle bridge and the 8 minute heavy rocker that turns engaging swirling atmospheric prog, "I Can't Stop It" (the first song to use the Vintage Keys mellotron string sound). Both of these songs are available on compilations with the former appearing on, "Anthology II 1993 - 2002" and the latter on, "The Witching Hour". Both compilations are of course available on BandCamp. The second half of the album consists of a couple cover tunes and another with the lyrics provided by someone not available for contact - copyright protection being the primary reason the album itself isn't available for listening/download.

On reflection, the band likely would have been wiser splitting the album in two, releasing the first half as an extended EP and saving the second half songs for a B-sides and rarities album. The first half as an extended EP release would have easily been rated at 4 stars; however, taken in it's current configuration the album is rated 2 stars as it's primarily of interest to collectors and the 2 best songs are available on compilation albums.