FUTURE ECHOES OF THE PAST

Yet another live album from the current Uriah Heep line up, "Future echoes of the part" was recorded from concerts on two consecutive nights in Aschaffenburg/Colossaal and Munich in Germany in 1999.

The proliferation of live albums by this line up was becoming something of a necessary evil as the band continued to seek a record company contract which would allow them to return to the studio to record an album. Even then, it took quite a while after the gigs had been recorded before this album saw the light of day, such was their plight.

As usual, the set list offers a good combination of songs written and recorded by the current line up, plus favourites from the classic era. As has become customary for most bands with a proud history, the newer songs tend to be up-front, with the real crowd pleasers to follow. With such a wealth of supreme material in their archives, the band have developed an excellent habit of dusting off songs which have not been performed live for many a year and adding them to the set. In this case, it is good to see "Sweet freedom", "Rain", and "Bird of prey" all gaining a new lease of life.

Many of the hardy perennials are there of course, such as "July Morning", "Easy livin'", "Look at yourself" and of course "Gypsy". While such songs never lose their appeal, one does have to question how many live recordings of them we need, especially when they are performed by the same line up.

That said, those who have fond memories of the band, but who have not revisited their music for a while, will find much to enjoy on this double CD collection. The performances of the old material are faithful, while allowing the current long lasting line up to impose their own imprint upon them.

The album closes with a sound check recording of "Come away Melinda", a song which originally appeared alongside "Gypsy" on the band's first album. The performance is to studio standards, Bernie Shaw giving a wonderfully emotional performance of this classic piece.

Noted record producer Pip Williams took on those duties for this album, going on to develop a close working relationship with the band. His sympathetic production here clearly has an impact on the quality of the product. Sadly though, to date another studio album has yet to appear, despite the fact that the band are still very much alive and touring constantly. 1998's "Sonic Origami" remains their latest studio album, something which will hopefully change in early 2007.

It was very enthusiastic time for HEEP - they just signed to Classic Rock Legends label, celebrated their 30th anniversary and had recently released two very good albums, ''Sea of Light'' and ''Sonic Origami'', their best ones since Hensley's departure. It seems the band felt that they made really good music, 11 of 22 tracks are from these, then new albums. ''Between Two Worlds'', dedicated to David Byron, is a great opener and a powerful start of the show. The whole album has a good balance between new songs sounding on par with Byron-era classics and between fast and slow songs, between heavy rockers and ballads.

The whole band shines here. Bernie Shaw sings like Bernie Shaw without trying to copy his predecessors, he hits all possible and impossible notes, famous Heep multi-vocal harmonies are perfect here (don't know though whether there were some studio overdubs). You can easily recognize Mick's wah-wah guitar and he also plays acoustic guitar in many songs. Lee Kerslake and Trevor Bolder provide solid rhythm and Trevor plays amazing melodic bass lines, just listen to the version of ''July Morning''. And of course there are Phil Lanzon's keyboards, no comparisons to Ken Hensley, Phil never tried to imitate him. The band sounds inspired and effortlessly (at least from the listener's point of view), musicians obviously enjoy playing all these new and old songs.

These performances were also released on ''The Legend Continues'' DVD, but unfortunately without ''July Morning'' (what a crime!) and ''Feels Like''.

After this album Classic Rock Legends released a number of HEEP current line-up live CDs and DVDs. All of them have good moments and songs rarely played live before, but ''Future Echoes of the Past'' and ''Acoustically Driven'' are the best from that period.