ASHES ARE BURNING

On the second album of the Renaissance guided by Annie Haslam's voice and John Tout's powerful bass guitar, the symphonic folk fusion sound starts to get a firm grip of their artistic vision. The self-confidence possibly being revealed or at least offered through the gatefold album covers, portraying powerfully the musicians working with the compositions of Betty Thatcher and guitarist Michael Dunford.

The opener "Can You Understand" is a really beautiful dive to attractive synthesis of folk music and symphonic rock emulating classical music philosophies with very powerful emphasis. Some of the choir sections and Slavic instrumental passages here remind some idioms familiar from the works of Russian classical composers, and I have understood Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and others have been a certain target of adoration in the composers and musicians studies. The mellow acoustic main composition is wrapped around a sphere of dynamic circling powered by grand piano and swinging Rickenbacker bass. "Let it grow" is then a quite basic, sweet ballad focusing to classic "lied" configuration of singer and piano, accompanied by acoustic guitar and rhythm section. Hearing Annie sing about "making love" is true honey for a man's soul, and the sweet syrupy melodic themes take a black hearted person for being annoyed. Promising future is next beheld from the position "On the frontier", a lovely acoustic piece for multivocal harmonies, with some witty arrangements inside the simple song. Some of these maneuvers give again quite strong senses of déjà vu from "The Yes Album", molded however to this band's own classic music directed tonal language. "Carpet of the sun" has quite memorable melody verse, relying powerfully for Annie's vocals, and wrapping around orchestral tapestries as charming little song. "At the harbour" returns to more musically ambitious compositions, reaching fine atmosphere with intro's longing piano progressions, leading to the embrace of vocalist's wonderful performance for the webs of acoustic guitar. The song aims for ethereal moods, and lingers on the turntable calmly without bursting to dynamic tensions. The album concludes to masterful "Ashes are burning", climbing gently from hollow winds like cute little insects rising to the green shades of trees reaching for heaven. Melodies shift interestingly between major and minor keys, and the two themes from the beginning lead to ascending fireworks of instrumental virtuosic displays, creating a fine emotional passage from sophisticated entwining of piano, harpsichord and rhythm section instruments, and also dramatic synthesizer motive over shimmering layers of percussions. The return to fragile vocal lines and following explosion for the musical heights is also one of the most affecting musical sensations which I have yet found from the symphonic rock recordings. The electric guitar solo is also rare feature for this group, and is powerfully notable from the acoustic and classical instrumentations as on some older Procol Harum albums. The studio version fades out to the void, leaving arranged ending and yet more epic interpretation to the concert stages.

As I approach music created when I wasn't even born yet, my own judgment is affected by the perspective of whole discography history which I have reached to my attention. Especially the marvelous compositions "Ashes are Burning" and "Can You Understand" are in my opinion canonized to much greater heights on their forthcoming "Live at The Carnegie Hall" album, culminating their career for me. However this album is also very adorable, and required some maturing from myself to be able accept the warmness and kindness shimmers through its art.