JIN-ZO-NI-N-GEN

I enjoy listening to bands that no-one else has ever heard of, and I particularly like hearing bands from overseas. So I was very pleased to be sent these discs by Hiroshi in Japan, but unfortunately I have been able to find out very little about them on the web, and the sleeve notes to the CDs are of course in Japanese. Oh well, better just listen to the music then. Round House are a five piece instrumental progressive rock band, with roots firmly in Camel although they do use the twin guitar interplay to fine effect and even manage to come across as Wishbone Ash at times. The debut album (which I think translates to 'The Facsimile Edition') was originally released at the end of 1978, with the first three tracks recorded in a studio and the other two recorded 'live' (for this reissue there is one more track from the same period). The sound quality does very somewhat, and isn't as good as it could be at times (the bass is particularly low in the mix throughout), but when they are blasting out as on "Tour Of The Deep Ocean" then this is very fine indeed. The mix between prog, jazz, and more straight ahead guitar interplay shows that this band could cut it inside either genre, and if all of the songs had the recording quality of the first three then this would be extremely highly recommended. As it is, this is still an album well worth hearing.

Originally appeared in Feedback #71, Dec 02