GLASS TOP COFFIN

This is my 500th review (unless my one and only rating without review messes the number). I haven't heard Space Hymns which is much more famous - thanks partly to the Roger Dean art work and the future 10cc playing on it. This one was a sad commercial failure and made Ramases (Martin Raphael) to withdraw himself from music business. Co-produced with keyboard player Barry Kirsch, it's a very charming, naiive, soft-folkish album and I'm surprised to see only three reviews of it!

The slow, majestic opener 'Golden Landing' has a female choir and orchestra. 'Long, Long Time' is a very atmospheric song, 'Now Mona Lisa' a solid folk song featuring both Ramases and Sel(ket) as vocalists. I had this kind of an association with this serene and fairly romantic album: dreamy folk hippies accompanied by Barclay James Harvest plus a light orchestra of Emmanuelle soundtracks. May not be very much progressive rock, but beautiful nevertheless. The title track with more biting rhythm breaks the mood a bit, as the ethearal 'Children of the Green Earth' has even the charming cliche of whispered backing vocals. I think this work captures well the fragile spirit of the artist, who committed suicide in 1978.