SCHEHERAZADE AND OTHER STORIES

I listened Renaissance from PA few years ago. The song was "Ashes Are Burning", which I simply though to be nice, but it left no greater impact on me. About half a year ago I listened again and though that this is one of the most beautiful songs I had ever heard. After short considering I decided to buy my first Renaissance album. According to Progarchives "Scheherazade and Other Stories" is clearly the most celebrated Renaissance album, so it was an obvious choice.

"Scheherazade and Other Stories" is the fourth album by Renaissance (Annie Haslams lineup to be precise). It certainly is the most ambitious album they ever made. The album mostly consists of the epic song, Song Of Scheherazade, which is over 20 minutes long. I have seen articles where it was doubted wheter Renaissance is prog band or just "ordinary" band. This song in particular proves those articles to be totally wrong.

The album is started with adventurous "Trip To The Fair". Powerful Tout's piano with Annie's beautiful vocals makes this song an exellent starter. Trip is followed by very short "The Vultures Fly High" which you might actually concider as filler. Filler or not I still find this song very enjoyable. Ocean Gypsy is a very sad perhaps bit ballad like song. Overall all the three songs before "Song of Scheherazade are good, no complaning of any sort, but you may slightly get feeling that they are just starters before the main course.

The 20+ minute epic "Song Of Scheherazade" which this album is mainly about is truly a grandeur song. I don't however know how much they have composed of it themselves and how much they have "borrowed", as Renaissance sometimes a bad habit of using stuff made by classical composers without crediting them at all. This certainly would affect my review, but I have no fact information of it so I won't let it affect this review. You certaily could write a book of the song, but I will just squeeze the whole book to one word : Excellent!

"Song Of Scheherazade" travels trough numerous moods and feelings. It is very adventurous as epics should be and you can clearly hear Renaissance in it. Prog and Classical music propably have never been so close to each other. I just noticed that "Song Of Scheherazade" passed extremely hard test for epics. 24 minutes fly as you listen to it. The true man behind the great music of Renaissance (along Annie ofcourse) is Jon Camp. Who definedly is one of the worlds best bassists.

I had hard time choosing between 4 or 5 stars. The album is not totally flawless. Still giving 4 stars to album like this and a band like Renaissance would't be right. Thats why I give it 4.5 stars. In PA that goes to 5 stars in this case.

Renaissance is a band that everyone should give a try. So click "Renaissance" now and listen to "Ashes Are Buring" and "Mother Russia" it no doubt is worth of the time!

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