OUT OF THE TUNNEL'S MOUTH

What can I add- regarding such a legendary guitarist like Steve Hackett? During his participation at Summer Festival in Lugano in July 2009 -He played with a strong impact and a great feeling along with the Swiss crowd too- and that particular gig let me think of the renewed sessions inside his own Recording Studio!! Instead as usual here you find a traditional style, in the vein of some classic successful rock albums such as "Watch the storms" or "Defector" (listen to the opener "Fire On The Moon"), but without forgetting his new exploration into new music territories (a sort of Spanish and ethnic folk, by thinking of the last track)...Anyway, talking about the first songs and in particular "Nomads", you can already understand and have a small "sampling" of his new music direction, which is well supported by Anthony Phillips with a 12-string guitar (obviously in the most "sensible" and acoustic parts); but his typical style is the main part of the whole work. Instead Chris Squire, regarding the bass guitar and Ferenc Kovacs at the violin represent a remarkable choice (the first one as an important member of Yes and the second one as for his strong presence inside an ensemble of World Music, called Djabe!!)...Moreover his vocalism is usually his unique defect within a few solo albums- while here it's offset by the female vocals by Amanda Lehman, as well as the backing vocals by Jo Lehman, being good...then regard John Hackett at the flute, which is able to keep on maintaining the perfect balance between the acoustic parts and those electric ones, when the electric guitar is not present and- at the end-such an important feature makes the present album well worth checking out at least (even though I don' t like his rock-blues style very much- like inside his previous album, but it's a minor defect)...ok, it's not as much important as for instance "Spectral Mornings", but a good product to buy after all!!...

Final score: between three and four stars- cause the present work is often enriched by means of previous unreleased and already listened to- stuff (already played I mean, during his recent concerts all over Europe).