FOCUS II [AKA: MOVING WAVES]

This is a very heterogeneous work. Looks like a roller-coaster that begins fast, high and wild. Magnificent, the first track cannot be excluded from any compilation of prog rock classics; if you don't know it yet, I just need to say that I NEVER met prog rock or rock fans that didn't like it. Continuing the entertainment, second track is an acoustic short presentation. Has some good tunes, but had also some lack of inventivity and variety; fortunately it ends exactly at 2min. The next two tracks are very dull and boring, they just keep repeating the same ordinary ideas on an on. It's when Akkerman isn't participating, by the way. The last track on side A fortunately has the guitarist back, leading the composition. And Pierre van der Linden is delivering a very dinamic drumming, and when the best guitar and flute tunes are performing Pierre is perfectly discrete.

Side B, a 23min suite, figures to me as a random union of musical proposals, where the instrumental phrasings have a big lack of time and creativity to develop. When Akkerman assumes the guitar sometimes fine notes can be heard, but the drumming and most of all the keyboards are confusing or monotonous most of the time.

3 stars on a five-star scale.