CASCADE

This is the third album by Guy Manning, and is easily his best to date. Any Tull lover will immediately warm to songs such as "Tears In The Rain" where Guy accompanies himself on acoustic guitar and there is just a little background keyboards to add texture. I kept imagining that it would fit quite well on 'Minstrel In The Gallery', on side two just after "Baker St. Muse".

Although Guy provides the vast majority of the instruments, he has brought in a couple of guests to add some extra colours such as sax. Cyclops boss Malcolm Parker feels that the title cut could be a contender for prog song of the year and while I am not prepared to go that far, there are some very pleasant Floydian nuances that make it a great introduction to the album as a whole. He even manages to bring in some VDGG as well as some quite commercial pop touches to the same song.

Of course the follow-up, "By The Book" could only start by having a multi-tracked sax jazz introduction. The album would have made sense otherwise, even if it didn't come across as Gary Numan playing acoustic jazz prog!!

There are some wonderful songs on here, and I am sure that many progheads will enjoy this album that is really a slice out of time. It doesn't belong in this century.

Originally appeared in Feedback #65, Dec 01