SILENT DANCE

The debut Solstice " Silent Dance" still remains my favorite album by them, although the recent album ' Light up' comes close!

Silent Dance came out in 1984 in the middle of the 'new wave of British progressive rock'. A movement that was later, often disdainfully, referred to as neo-prog. I would not call Solstice neo-prog; they were a bit different. They made a hippy-ish spacey progressive rock with beautiful layered arrangements.

The main influence on this band seems to be Yes. The vocals of singer Sandy Leigh more than often sound like Jon Anderson. An exception is the last track where she sings in her natural voice. Since this track is called ' find yourself' I do no think this is a coincidence.

Its is hard to pinpoint highlights on the album since the songs are off a consistently high quality. Maybe the dreamy and spacey " Earthsong" is my favorite.

Anyway great debut by a very promising band that never really got the recognition they deserved. Maybe they had to sound more like Marillion at the time but they had their own vibe going.

I am in doubt between 4 and 5 stars but 'an essential masterpiece of progressive rock' seems a bit too much praise.

4,5 stars

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