ASHES ARE BURNING

Finally enjoying something resembling stability in their lineup, Renaissance went back to the studio to record Ashes Are Burning with Michael Dunford installed as a full member of the group (as he had been briefly before Prologue). Favouring acoustic guitar over electric, this lent a folky air to the band's classical-influenced prog, giving rise to the classic Renaissance sound that would see the band through to the Song for All Seasons/Azure d'Or era.

Dunford also deserves credit for coming into his own as a songwriter here, providing music to five out of the six tracks here (all the lyrics on the album were, of course, contributed by the enigmatic Betty Thatcher). One song, On the Frontier, was written by former Renaissance co-founder Jim McCarty, and it has to be said that it's probably the weakest song on the album. At this point, the new Renaissance lineup had more or less moved out of the shadow of the old one, and were stronger for it.

I'd previously been more lukewarm on Ashes Are Burning, though this may be because for a good long time the only CD copies available were pretty average in terms of execution. The recent remastering by Esoteric really helps tease out the finer parts of the music, and places Renaissance as a band who had found their own distinct niche in the prog landscape - namely, carrying the torch of the brightest and most optimistic phases of the psychedelic era whilst fusing it with high-quality folk-classical musical sensibilities, carried on the soaring voice of Annie Haslam.