DIVERGENCE

This is excellent & accessible Netherlandish fusion with expressive lead vocals. There is an omnipresent melodic and rhythmic piano; the other involved keyboards are mainly an often very distorted dirty organ, electric piano mainly with a VERY dirty effect, and wah-wah dirty moog like on the Camel's "Moonmadness" album. There are excellent lively sax melodies. The saxes are sometimes absolutely extreme and very intense, like at the end of the "Divergence" track, reminding the ones at the end of Pink Floyd's "Shine on your crazy diamond part 1". The bass is very loud and bottom, especially on the "Concentration" track. There are a couples of psychedelic or spacy parts, like the drowned effect on the piano of "Second line" or the minimal keyboards a la Tangerine Dream's "Alpha Centauri" on the intro of "Fever". Hans Waterman's drums are very varied, complex and refined, as always. There are some very good flute parts. The "Divergence" track was replayed by Focus, on their "Eruption" track. The excellent flute on "Fever" sounds like the one on the early Focus' albums, and the dirty piano reaches a very short wah-wah EXTREME INTENSITY! The too short "Theme" is a peaceful and graceful flute interlude, a sort of acoustic reprise of the main theme on "Concentration". "New dimension" is probably the most accessible one, with its catchy rhythmic piano & lead vocals plus its tender saxes quite played in the background; have you noticed the constant dirty organ line in the background? Compared to the next "Cordon Bleu" album, released 4 years later, this record sounds really vintage; however, this record should proudly be in any reasonable 1971 top prog/fusion list.

Rating: 4.5 stars