...SOUNDS LIKE THIS

While Nektar's two early works had shown a clear inclination towards psychedelia and spacey instrumentation, it is also true that Roye Albrighton's distorted and generally raspy guitars brought with them a few decibels above the standard progressive movement, giving the band a very definite personality of their own.

And with "...Sounds Like This", their third album (1973), the English band based in Germany seems to want to exorcise all that rock energy in an extensive work starring Albrighton's haemorrhagic and rocky guitar dissertations, with Allan Freeman's keyboards remaining more as an important support with shy solo participations, as well as those of Derek Moore's solvent bass, and therefore moving away from the structured and lysergic style more identifiable of Nektar.

In the raw and rudimentary approach of the album, initially recorded live and then retouched and reformulated in the studio, lies its greatest attraction, with pieces marked by instrumental improvisation, and where both the arpeggiated and boxed guitar opening of "Good Day" and its persistent choral refrain, the wink to the beatlenian "Norwegian Wood" in the emotional "New Day Dawning", the bluesy "What Ya Gonna Do? "and Albrighton's vocal and guitar counterpoint stand out, as do the extended lucubrations of the funky "1-2-3-4" with the very active Ron Howden on drums accompanying the once again unleashed Albrighton, the thunderous and unbridled distorted guitar solo on the demanding "Do You Believe in Magic?", and the also lengthy and bluesy "Odyssey", with Howden's drum solo included, and a final section of increasing intensity, to bring the work to a close.

"...Sounds Like This" moves away from the progressive canons, and is rather an interesting sample of corrosive and primitive classic rock, something that Nektar would not repeat in the following years.

3/3.5 stars