THE WAKE

IQ's first masterpiece is The Wake, a concept album about a protagonist undergoing phantasmagoric experiences as he comes to terms with the fact that he's died and learns to let go of his earthly connections as he passes to an uncertain fate. Distilling the Genesis- influenced approach of Tales From the Lush Attic into tighter, more carefully composed tracks and showing an adept ability to include a few crowd-pleasing mainstream rock elements into their sound without compromising the emotional and conceptual integrity of the piece (as on The Thousand Days), the album shows a far greater diversity of sound and mood than its predecessor, with songs ranging from the foreboding Outer Limits to the relaxing Corners (one of the few neo-prog tracks I'm aware of which includes an indo-prog influence thanks to the inclusion of sitar) to the uplifting, soaring Thousand Days and Headlong.

As far as the band's performances go, the interplay of Mike Holmes' guitar and Martin Orford's synths has rarely been equalled, whilst Peter Nicholls' dramatic, theatrical vocal delivery is excellent on this album. He left the band after this one to pursue his Niadem's Ghost sabbatical, and I'd go so far as to say that even if he'd never returned he'd still have a strong claim to being IQ's best vocallist based on his work here. Indeed, if IQ had vanished into obscurity or sold out utterly after this point they'd still have a warm reputation in neo-prog circles thanks to this classic; luckily for us, they had more classics up their sleeve.