CONFLICT AND DREAMS

Cairo released three neo-prog/symphonic albums from 1994 to 2001. Each seems to have been a rough draft of the next -- and I would argue that this is equally true of their 2001 album Time of Legends, even though there never was a next album; Time of Legends had several strong pieces alongside some in-process songs.

Maybe it's me seeing a trend where none exists, but Conflict and Dreams seems to fit this pattern. In the album-opener "Angels and Rage" we can see the members of Cairo acknowledging their debt to Genesis -- the intro to "Angels" is right out of Wind & Wuthering -- but also relinquishing it. By the time "Angels" is halfway through, the listener has been introduced to the essential elements of the band's unique sound.

Throughout Conflict and Dreams the band continues to experiment with lengthy instrumental introductions; only on "Then You Were Gone" (at 8:25, the second-shortest song on the album) do the vocals start during the first minute of the track. But in this respect "Then You Were Gone" begins a trend which will be continued on the next album.

There also are signs that the band's unity had been waning from one album to the next. Cairo has been compared to Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and this seems accurate on many fronts, including the members' level of self-regard. On all three releases, much ink was spent identifying drummer Jeff Brockman and keyboardist Mark Robertson (and originally, guitarist Alec Furman) as the (co-)Producer, Engineer, Arranger, and Mixer. We're even told, with an abundance of Uppercase Letters, "Computer Artwork Designed And Produced By Jeff Brockman." Nonetheless, on their first album, all six songs were co-written by at least two of the key members of the band. On Conflict and Dreams, this was true of five of the six (one song was written and performed by Robertson alone). And on their final album, three of the seven songs were written by one member alone, with Robertson and Brockman each getting a solo turn.

But accompanying this apparent increase in disjunction was an increase in quality. Cairo had its charms, but Conflict and Dreams is an improvement. Nonetheless, Conflict and Dreams still suffers from a lack of compositional quality, something Cairo would go a long way toward remedying with Time of Legends.