The Renaissance Zone

Vultures has the rock like groove but not the hard edge of a Black Flame.  I don't mean pop in a commercial/pejorative sense anyway; more like by elimination it is the only slot left.  By Scheherazade, they are no longer very folk and not much of rock is left in the mix either so pop-classical seems to be a good fit.  I'd have liked it if they had done more pop-classical or just outright pop songs, WITHOUT badly wanting another Northern Lights, which is what ruined their attempts to do so from AZD onwards.  Northern Lights just happened, they didn't try to write a smash hit that would get them to Top of the Pops and that is why it works. 

I agree about Renaissance Illusion being a great album.  I also enjoy McCarty's "Out of the Dark" that came before Renaissance Illusion very much, while "Sitting on the Top of Time" that came after it is pretty good as well.  He has stuck to his hippy philosophizing in a way that seems authentic to me.

Dunford did play a fine spanish guitar solo on "The Sisters".  It's funny, I never thought about his limited skills, and assumed that the way he played was just what the doctor ordered for Renaissance.  But given the absence of electric guitar in all of their core albums, a more flashy acoustic guitarist might have been a good idea.  I doubt it would have net them more fans though

Wait a sec, I never said Camp was a weak link for Renaissance.  He was most definitely an asset and his thunderous bass beefed up their sound, which  may have otherwise come across as plodding (and seems to on Grandine Il Vento). Since the question of comparing Camp to other bassists came up, I gave my own perspective where I tend to also look at their compositional inputs and not just flat out chops.  I think rather than filling in for Dunford, Camp was filling in to some extent for the absence of electric guitar.  Be that as it may, I don't think adventurous harmony was something they were really after.  From what I have gleaned from interviews - and feel free to correct me there - they were all fans of classical music and, MAYBE, fans of the sounds of classical itself more than its complexity.  Where other prog rock bands tried to bridge rock and the complexity of classical and jazz, Renaissance were trying to marry the sound of classical music with rock.  Which is an attractive sound for what it's worth but at some point I'd have liked for them to have moved deeper into experimentation.  Judging from the live extended solos that Camp or Tout used to play in shows, I suspect that they just did not think about their music on those lines.

actually it's Leo Traversa in the concerts and the DVD.  It could be he plays more like Camp than Keyes did, but I think the whole band sounds more energetic.  That's a good point about the album sounding a bit thin.  As a result it suffers in comparison to the 1970s studio albums which were so grandiose and often used an orchestra, and of course the bass was so prominent