THE ROAD HOME

Jordan Rudess has been around for more than 20 years in the prog-scene but I must admit I have always been on the verge of commenting his musical efforts as butteflying between some eclectic-crossover prog, jazz rock-fusion and progressive metal. Sometimes I strongly have the feeling that his true nature manifests itself only in his solo efforts, his deeds often get crossed in DT where the stress falls on metal-in-prog rather than artistic purety. However, while Jordan's professional pianism has never been and never will be demanded nor his technical background knowledge, his solo thingies vary in every sense. Some seem half finished, some seem full or lacking of emotion, some seem to be too much into some amateruish-jazz things, and some seem very far from what great music can be created by simple weaving pianistic sounds together, quirkied, ramified and chromatically structured. While he can realize albums like the two superb ones with R. Morgenstein and LTE, and he is in the position to create almost anything he likes and to get circumvallated by such good musicians like the ones here, he can make such albums like his Christmas cd, Feeding the wheel, Notes on a Dream, which are without any depth, and void in a whole. This album about covering prog-works from the past is quite the same. Only one thing can come everyone's mind putting on this record: Why make things again and again? With Dance on the Volcano, Sound Chase etc. needing no introduction and being piled up with the Pi-thing and the Piano medley, this album still lacks of any originality, simply it turns the originals out of their magfnifying and histrocial skin, adding some jazz touched-improvised-like things into their lines of inside. Tarkus, which is quite a long but good one en originale, is the low tide. As said before, technically is okay, musicians are very shaped, but in vain, it is empty. No more words just two stars.