SCARABUS

This is the third Jazz-Rock/Fusion album from Ian Gillan. Compared with Clear Air Turbulence, Scarabus is more in line with Gillan's hard rock days in Deep Purple and the songs are shorter and less elaborated. But melodically strong. The musicianship is still excellent and they again create a hard-rock-jazz-rock- crossover. Collins Towns is a great keyboard player but there is much less room for him to stretch out on this album.

Personally, I am a bigger fan of Deep Purple than I am of Jazz-Rock/Fusion in general, but this album is quite good and is even up to par with many Deep Purple albums. And perhaps this is a good starting point for Deep Purple fans to get into Jazz-Rock, but for the Jazz purists Clear Air Turbulence is without doubt the better album.

Good, but non-essential