RESURRECTION

Most 7 string guitar work you hear is in one of the heavy metal sub genres. An exception to that general rule is provided here with the opening track to this album.

Almost all of the guitar work on "Death of a Nation" is done on 7 string with only a smallish portion of it being given over to what one might view as metal. The rest of it varies between Blues and Hard Rock with a bit of Camel style clean guitar work around the middle.

There are quite a few subdivisions on this track although none of them are individually titled.

It's an artful track of almost 23 minutes and is also track one of a 3 track trilogy - the other two being ' The Time Between' and the title track 'Resurrection' all of which are presumably based around the 9/11 World trade Centre and Pentagon attacks (you'll get the idea of why I think that if you listen to it).

Presumably the entire 'story' is an imaginary one because America is still very much alive and kicking - maybe the concept is a moral one...? I don't know... but overall it's quite effective if one uses ones imagination somewhat. There are some lovely little keyboard solos on 'Death' which sound like they've been done on a minimoog, and again brings Camel to mind.

The remaining tracks on the album are :

"Pink Moon Rises Pt 2" : nice track which has a kind of spaced out Steve Hillage around the time of "Green" acid trip type intro which moves into an acoustic backed traditional sounding string arrangement, and finally explodes into a Dave Gilmour style epic. Very nicely played and full of emotion.

"Seagulls" : Kinda quirky this one. Short and sweet and sounds like the seashore somewhere.....

"End Piece" : Very laid back and a nice closing track to chill out to. Built around acoustic guitar and piano with some lighter sounding drums.

Nice album overall and similar to this guys previous offerings in that it's all very retro sounding. Pretty easy to listen to as well so should appeal to most who like the old style prog sound.

Some interesting sounding music on this album which might please the more mature listening audience and also those with a penchant for days gone by who might be familiar with the sounds of the big hard rock and prog bands of the 1970s : Genesis, Floyd, Deep Purple etc, as that - to my ears at least - seems to be where the major influences and ideas are coming from on this album. Having said that however, there is a nice section dedicated to 9/11 in the middle of track 1 so maybe not all of the ideas on it are necessarily based in 1970s music.

6 tracks in total with a couple of really long ones at 23 minutes and 17 minutes. Total run time is around 58 minutes so reasonably good value for money there.

It's my opinion that some of this music would be really good for soundtrack or film material as it's highly atmospheric in places, particularly on the shorter tracks 'The Time Between', 'Seagulls' and 'End Piece' which are very ambient and cinematically styled.

The more conventional prog tracks ' Death of a Nation", "Resurrection", and "Pink Moon Rises Pt 2", are loaded with great guitar and retro sounding keyboard work, namely Hammond Organ and Moog Synthesiser, as well as some orchestral strings and horns. . The whole is underlaid with a good strong rythm section providing solid drums and bass, some of which is reminiscent of the playing style of Chris Squire.

In conclusion I would say that this is a fine piece of work which should appeal to a wide range of listeners across the whole of the prog spectrum, and I recommend it especially to fans of instrumental music.

Consisting of 6 instrumental tracks of varying length which I will outline below.

Track 1. Death of a Nation : 22.33 mins. Moving from blues to rock to psychadelic to acoustic, and finishing off on a raucous, but melodic, note. This track has a little bit of everything with some very tasty guitar and keyboard work throughout..

Track 2. The Time Between : 05.38 mins. a gentle respite of flowing dreamy pianos and clean guitars which follows on nicely from track 1.

Track 3. Resurrection : 16.19 mins. The title track begins with some solo fingerpicking acoustic guitar in the style of Steve Hackett before moving into an equally Hackett - esque atmospheric intro which would have easily fitted into the Spectral Mornings album.

From there it follows a vaguely similar format to the opening track, moving from straight forward rock to a Wakeman/Howe style atmospheric section of dreamy keyboards and clean swelling guitars to finally finish with a long ambient passage, again with some very nice lead work and big sounding keys.

Track 4. Pink Moon Rises Pt 2 : 05.44 mins. Keyboard intro moving into orchestrated 12 string guitar section, and finishing off with a very definite nod to Pink Floyd in their more accessible moments. If you like the guitar work in Comfortably Numb, this is kind of similar - big solo played in simple pentatonics with a very big sound : lovely stuff.

Track 5. Seagulls : 02.39 mins. Shortest track on the album, built around fingerpicking guitar and fretless bass with a little bit of dreamy flute work in the middle.

Track 6. End Piece : Closing track, again built around acoustic guitar with that same dreamy piano which was exhibited on track 2. There's a nice sort of backwards atmospheric guitar break in the middle of this.

a nice collection of instrumentals from a relative newcomer to the genre and well worthy of addition to any collection.