FLY MAN

This EP is musically quite pleasant to listen to once you get used to it I guess. It's a short musical experience (which usually disappoints a die hard 70's long prog track lover like me), but in this case it's long enough.............for reasons I'll explain later on.

Clepsydra's a band that make music in the lines of bands like (Fish period) Marillion, Citizen Cain, Pendragon......and so on, and thus somewhat (or in some cases quite blatantly) imitating Genesis.

The musicians obviously are more than capable of delivering a well played pieces of orchestration,the album's however not too elaborately produced, the recording quality is acceptable, and the tracks varybetween quiet synth based passages and elaborate Steve Rothery rip off guitar packed bombastics.

All in all these could be elements for quite a listenable and enjoyable piece of prog, yet it's not there in my opinion. Not enough time put into writing lyrics, too long passages of music with little variation, and then there's there's one more thing.....The vocals. Aluisio Maggini's heavy swiss accent which really start to agravate me after more than 20 minutes.....hence this cd being more than long enough. If they used some close harmony vocals to hide the monotone Schwarzenegger accent vocals of Mr Maggini, some tracks may have had a far greater impact on me, which they didn't.

I bought this EP at a secondhand CD shop, for next to nothing....and I sometimes find myself giving it the odd spin every 6 to 8 months. I'm sure it's nice to have for some Clepsydra fans in their collections, but for non insiders it's nothing out of the ordinairy.

A BIT OF THE FUTURE

This, as most of the CD singles/EP´s, show a more 'radio friendly' side of the bands. In this case they included "Fly Man" which would be later part of the magificent album MORE GRAINS OF SAND released the following year, and in my opinion, the poppiest track on that album. Also we have "New Day(Part One)" which was a song from their debut HOLOGRAM, and is a nice track but in the same case that "Fly Man" is the most 'commercial ' of the mensioned CD. The best track of the EP is with no doubt "Moonshine On Heights" also from MGOS, an amazing track and we can say that just for that song the disc is worthed. To end we have again "Fly Man" but in its instrumental version.

If you are already familiar with the band and you own the albums mensioned above, you can skip this one, but if you don´t know this Swiss act and you are into Neo Prog and specially from the 80's, could be a good idea to try this CD to get acquainted and then get the other ones (any of the 4 from their discography).

Between 2.5 and 3 ... I´ll stay with 3.

Viva el Prog!