FREQUENCY

At the end of the 2000's, IQ once again took refuge in the structures of progressive rock and, keeping the seventies Genesis as a fundamental but not exclusive reference, released their tenth album, "Frequency" (2009). The band led by the consolidated voice of Peter Nicholls masterfully rearranges the sound bases of the genre in modernised melodies that flow without urgency or time parameters that limit their development, counting for the occasion on the solvent Mark Westworth on keyboards and Andy Edwards on percussion, replacements for Martin Orford and Paul Cook respectively, who left the band after the predecessor "Dark Matter".

IQ takes a very brief radio and Morse code fragment of the announcement of the controversial dropping of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima to prelude the dense and dark "Frequency", a piece that kicks off an album that persistently makes use of gentle harmonic and neatly marked notes, like Westworth's heartfelt piano complemented by the atmospheric guitar delay of Mike Holmes in the ballad "Life Support", or the beautiful acoustic melody of "One Fatal Mistake", or the guitar arpeggios of Holmes, both in the half-time of the intense "Ryker Skies" dominated by Westworth's mellotrons and synthesizers and John Jowitt's powerful bass, and in the super-progressive "The Province", a piece that also interchanges the calm ambiences with the thrilling instrumental displays that the solid rhythmic base of Jowitt's bass and Edwars' percussion propose, surely the best track of the album, and the step prior to the emotive "Closer", the jubilant closing of "Frequency".

IQ sails placidly once again in the progressive oceans with "Frequency", not sounding repetitive but rather like crew members focused on continuing to explore a familiar but also naturally challenging route.

4 stars