FRANK WYATT & FRIENDS: ZEITGEIST

Another great prog artist that passed away recently, january 10th, was Frank Wyatt. He was a member of Happy the Man and Oblivion Sun on all its discography, playing sax, flute, piano, synth, composing and eventually singing. A listener that have already heard these groups may argue that I didn't make a fine choice of review to honor him, because the above mentioned ones have much more superior works. I agree, but only partially. IMO, the best way to honour someone's memory, or legacy, is to make it in a fair way, what implies to comment on all his/her marks. The brilliant and the not-so-talented ones. And until now this album has no reviews on PA.

Approximately half of this album, like tracks 4 and 5, are medium; the other half, like the first and the 3rd tracks, are considerably more interesting.

To analyze this album's style and proposal it's better to divide it in two different parts.

One part goes from tracks 1 to 6. They're similar to the composing and execution found on Oblivion Sun's discs. A smooth and captivating Genesis-like sound, but not so inventive as the mentioned influence.

The other part of this work goes from tracks 7 to 10, which together becomes a 25:34 suite called Perelandra. This is the title of a book from irish Clive S. Lewis, first published in 1943, about an adventure on outer space. Lewis uses many greek references to build the story. Wyatt here went close to classical music, on its format and even on some instrumentation ? wind and chord instruments reproduced by the synths are widely present, such as some stunning tunes on piano. This section turns to me as a cross between HTM and Renaissance's songs that were near to classical music; like, for instance, in "Song of Scheherazade".

For this last contribution to prog rock from Frank Wyatt and friends, I'll give it a 3.4 star.