1984

I read George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty Four" long before I bought a cassette version of this album -- one of my favorite classic book, actually. You may easily guess that I already had certain imagination and even interpretation of how things were described in the book. So, it was kind of natural to me, after my first listening to this album, that I tried to examine whether the music fit with the whole plot of the book, with its nuance, or whether I could relate each of the songs with any particular scene.

And this was my finding: not only Wakeman masterfully crafted another well-rounded album, this time telling a well-known tale about a nightmarish dystopia while at same time successfully avoiding any risk, but he also made it almost irreplaceable.

I got the CD version a couple years ago and it was instantly made me even more impressed with how Wakeman put together every single element (be it an idea or a note or an instrument) and finally cut a sonic rich record. This is an example of what Wakeman did: to create futuristic sound, Wakeman incorporated a handful instruments, played by orchestral musicians; he infused French horns, piccolos, tubas, trombones, flutes and violins into his mastery of the keyboards.

Overall, the music is partly dark and partly bright, following the despair and hopelessness and warmth and promise depicted in the book. One can capture any of these nuances from songs like "The Proles", "Robot Man", "The Room" and "Julia" (how fascinating Chaka Khan is). Good thing is Wakeman's keyboards do not dominate the whole tracks. Rather they serve as a kind of "voorrijder", leading just the way effectively in most of the tracks, and only take over gracefully in songs like "The Room" and "1984".

This album deserves to be in the same place with other Wakeman's previous excellent efforts.