Prog Britannia - Album Reviews

  1969: Arcadium - Breathe Awhile - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFtWctjASs8

The epic album opener "I'm on My Way" is the highlight of the album. It's a hauntingly atmospheric song with a deliciously slow build-up after a deceptively quiet beginning. The spacey song features a delicately-played Hammond organ, laid-back acid guitar riffs, steady drumming, haunting ethereal voices and some atmospheric sound effects. The memorable song explodes into a full bore psychedelic jam of dramatic intensity around about the 9-minute mark, which should delight fans of way-out Acid Rock. Track 2 "Poor Lady" is a pure out-and-out rocker which maintains the fast pace from the previous song. Track 3 "Walk on the Bad Side" starts quietly with a gentle melody before bursting into life with some heavy guitar riffing and fast and wild Hammond organ-playing. Track 4 "Woman of a Thousand Years" is another up-tempo number with the ever-present Hammond organ blending nicely with acid guitar riffs and powerful drumming. Track 5 "Change Me" is one of those powerful and dramatically memorable songs that could have gone on to become a classic if it had received some radio airplay. Track 6 "It Takes a Woman" is another fast-paced Hard Rock song with a change of pace at the end to keep things interesting. Finally, this brings us to the second epic song "Birth, Life & Death" to play out the album. Everything is thrown into the mix for this song, including frantic Hammond organ-playing, wild psychedelic guitar riffs and a pounding drum beat, and the song also features a dramatic change of pace midway through, before concluding with a tremendous crescendo of sound. It's a perfect ending to a classic album.

 1969: Arzachel - Arzachel - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYDVhGYo7GKBa5NumcZeWEiqEvY8ZNw-L

The first track "Garden of Earthly Delights" is a very promising and impressive opening to the album and nicely sets the scene for the album as a whole. The track features a very pleasant rock organ playing in the background overlaid with electric guitar and fine vocals. The track ends with some appealingly far-out psychedelic guitar playing from Steve Hillage. Track 2 "Azathoth" has a very religious feel to it, opening with a resonant church organ and charming ethereal vocals. The middle section of the song features some powerfully heavy and freaky guitar riffs, before returning to the more sedate sound of the church organ towards the end. Track 3 "Queen St. Gang" is an instrumental and it's the stand-out track on the album for me. Again, it features the magnificent sound of the organ under-laying the music as a whole, together with some gently laid-back drumming. Track 4 "Leg" opens with an impressive organ solo before launching into heavy electric guitar riffs, twinned with powerful bass and drumming in the rhythm section. After the deceptively quiet beginning, this track turns into a real out-and-out rocking barnstormer of a song. Track 5 "Clean Innocent Fun", at over 10 minutes long, begins as a slow and heavy, full-on psychedelic jam which gathers in pace and dramatic intensity as the song progresses and should appeal to fans of Jimi Hendrix. The final track on the album "Metempsychosis" is the longest number at over 16 minutes in length. The track opens with some freaky sound effects before launching into some powerful and throbbing Space Rock which is very reminiscent of Hawkwind's early albums. This is by far the heaviest track on the album and features some wonderfully freaky psychedelic guitar licks. The song has a hauntingly reflective middle section before returning to the heavy pounding rhythm for the grand finale to the album.