THE MUSIC THAT DIED ALONE

As usual, I am very wary of such "projects" or supergroup as usually, they are completely disappointing and generally do not bring anything new. And of course not being a fan of Flower Kings, I was even doubly wary. But having not found at my library system the French Tangerine and not found the album I was looking after with German one (the one that is dreaming ;-), I fell upon this "thing". Having found doodley, I settled for squat and rented this disc, hoping it would somehow filled the void. Well zilch did not fill the empty space and I found myself fast forwarding plenty of passages on the second listen.

Don't get me wrong, this is a very "professional" album made by excellent musos, but the feeling that they are doing yet another umpteenth album is so present that the album reeks boredom even before you pressed play. Yes there are some good passages (notably the inaptly titled Canterbury-sumthin': sounds not much like anything remotely Kentish. Yet another cool moment is the fourth movement in the opening suite In Dark Dreams, but it is directly followed by an excruciatingly badly sung track, the reprise of Night Terror. And this is exactly the type of track that makes silence golden, and a welcome rest after the ordeal. BTW, David Jaxon's contributions are correct but nothing transcendental as he would be in VdGG.

So what exactly does this "thing" do? Well it gives plenty of rather good but directionless music that never even saw the broken grounds so long before them. The virgin territories explored in the 70's are not wide avenues with rich shopping areas on each side with large apartment buildings full of penthouses and plenty of parking spaces. Of course it is rather hard to be innovative nowadays, so I am sure that none of these professionals will even claim that they tried anything in that direction. So they just made yet another prog album, one of the many hundreds or so, cluttering the shelves of non-discerning and non- demanding progheads. Of course if you have not heard thousand albums like this old dog, this has a chance to please you, and who am to tell you to stay away from such stuff? But there are plenty more to discover in ProgArchives' vaults...