THE BIBLE

Wow, no this is an undertaking. Putting the whole Bible into a concept album. Eela Craig did a fine job with the Mass un Misa Universalis, Iona have made a fabulous album Book of Kells, based on... the Book of Kells. Neal Morse has also made an amazing concepts albums based around biblical themes namely '?'.

Both albums are worth delving into. However this is the ultimate concept album and Peter Gee has done an amazing of job of condensing the narrative into 70 minutes, spanning 28 or so tracks.

From the initial Apollo 8 recording we are taking on an amazing journey. I am only familiar with some of the Pendragon work such as The World and Window of Life. Just thought I would take a punt and order the CD and on a long journey from southern England to Scotland, soaked this lovely concept in.

The music is in the Pendragon/UK mould and works really well. Josh Brown's vocals are nice and powerful very emotive as well. The narration has a really nice ring to it and the inclusion of female vocals really adds to the resonance of the themes. In addition there are quite a few voice as instrument contributions (the word escapes me now). Being theme around the Bible I took great interest in the lyrics, and I found the delivery and construction of the lyrics to be rather innovative. As far as I can tell there are no repeated choruses on this album which means that everything flows nice and sequentially. There are some corus themes, but the lyrics keep on introducing new themes and storylines. I really liked this approach, making it far more truer to the idea of a concept album.

Peter also plays a wide range of instruments but calls upon a vast array of guest musicians to add flavour and depth to the who recording. Amazing feat for an ambitious task. I was sceptical anyone could really pull this off, but this is a surprising and superb effort!