FEARLESS, TEARLESS AND EVEN LESS

Circus's last album before calling it a day , although two members will record under the name Blue Motion later that year and Fritz Hauser is well known as a percussionist in jazz circles in Europe. Compared with the great but difficult debut and the masterful Movin 'On , there is a major change in one of the defining area that made Circus very special: the line- up. Almost everybody who has heard their first two albums agrees that what sets them apart is the very unusual line-up with two wind players, no KBs and no electric guitars.Well in this album , Grieder is gone and in comes Amman on KB , and the bassist Cerletti also handles electric guitars. Obviously this changes the sound drastically , but some of the Circus freshness elements evident on previous albums are still present.

Actually , some parallels can be drawn with Movin'On , as side 1 is dedicated to shorter tunes more in the song format, although two of them do come to the level of that album , Leave It and the title track, the other two are definitely sub-par in their range. Obviously the KB add an element that the use partly for the ambiances , partly for the riffs, but the flawless interplay of all four players of the previous album is not so evident here.

Side 2 should be more promising with two long tracks but if Hearts & Spaces is fine, Manaslu takes endless minutes to lift off and is almost over by the time you get to enjoy it. Obviously not as well written and developped as the Movin'On epic , they seem to have needed double the time for this last track to be effective.

As expected Circus's last album is a little different and no repeat performance, but it is still very much worth a spin, although I am probably rounding off my rating to the upper star. Available on bootleg label Tachika, that did a goiod job and it sounds good!