THE CLEVER USE OF SHADOWS

The first time I heard this album it blew me away. It proved a revelation from the first note to the last. The music on "The Clever Use of Shadows" is so well performed and the compositions were strong enough to instantly catapult this album from nowhere into the very top section of my personal all-time favourite recordings. The album managed to fuse together, to my liking, the best from the progressive rock genre with the very finest of jazz-rock, making it a masterpiece of the 90's. Much like the Flower Kings, I feel that Nathan Mahl on this album showed an incredible talent for combining various types of music and influences, producing a result few others have managed to better. On this album you can hear traces of prog greats such as Gentle Giant and ELP but also of jazz/jazz-fusion greats such as Allan Holdsworth for example. Even though impressions have faded over the years, this is still an excellent recording and clearly Nathan Mahl's finest moment.