LABYRINTH

This early Kit Watkins solo album is a must for Happy The Man fans. The first nine out of the thirteen tracks sound like they could have come from one of the HTM albums (While Crome Yellow Shine was actually written by Watkins and Frank Wyatt for Happy The Man). They are all fabulous pieces of keyboard driven symphonic prog, showing off Watkins' keyboard skills and love of odd and changing time signatures.

The album drops a bit toward the end. The last three tracks, the Cycles pieces, are new agey noodling. It's closer to some of the music that Watkins would explore in sone of his later releases. But at least these tracks are all short, and don't really reduce the value of the album.

4.5 stars.