MORAZ LIVE / ABBEY ROAD

It is contestable how "live" this album really is, since it is one of those live-in-the-studio affairs. Applause can be heard between a few of the pieces so there is a small studio audience present, but beyond those rather sparse applause there is no audience interaction to speak of. Like the spoken introduction by John DeBella makes clear, this is Patrick Moraz playing material from his album Human Interface. Moraz is the sole performer, playing a variety of electronic keyboards and percussion instruments. There is also a short interview of Moraz by DeBella included in which Patrick explains his choice of not being supported by a band as "self-imposed limitation". Limitation is probably the right word, and even if this is a brave and quite impressive enterprise, I suspect that the result would have been better with a band.

Oddly enough, the titles of the various pieces performed are not the same as on the Human Interface album. What on the album was called Go To Ophioplomal is here performed under the name of Electronica Classica, and an overture is added to the piece. Light Elements becomes Night Lights; Stormtroops on Loops becomes Scoops of Love; Modular Symphony becomes Molecular Symphony; Cin- A-Maah becomes The Godmother Theme; Beyond Binary becomes Age du Tertiaire; Stressless is renamed Stresslessness; and finally, Kyushu has become Night In Kyoto. The only track from Human Interface not performed here is Hyperwaves.

With the exception of Night Lights - which is the "live" version of Light Elements, the best track on Human Interface - these Abbey Road versions are either slight improvements over their Human Interface counterparts or at least of the same quality, even though the differences between the versions are very small. Night In Kyoto is as boring and overly long here as it was on the album and Stresslessness too is a rather dull number in both versions.

After the brief interview, Patrick performs a piano piece which closes the main part of the radio broadcast programme, the remaining three tracks on this CD being bonus tracks from an unknown (to me) source.

The final assessment of this album is that this is a release primarily for fans and collectors of Patrick Moraz but not recommended for the general Prog fan.