REDUX '92 LIVE IN JAPAN

This was the first live album since Utopia's second album "Another Live", and the first live Utopia album by the permanent lineup of Rundgren, Sultan, Powell and Wilcox. It is also, in fact, a reunion album, as the band broke up about six years before this tour.

Unfortunately, Utopia with this lineup quickly changed from a prog fusion band to a (highly talented) power pop group. And the set list here, because it covers their entire catalog, has very little true prog. Only The Ikon is really a prog song, but it's shortened down from it's original thirty minutes down to under five minutes. A few other songs have some prog elements, but that's all we get.

On the plus side, the band, even when playing non-prog, was damned good at it. Trapped, Swing to The Right, Abandon City and Caravan all sound great here. And the harder rockers, Hiroshima and The Last Of The New Wave Riders are just fantastic.

The low points are the later and blander Utopia tracks, like Only Human and One World.

But still, it's good to have a live set from this version of the band (although I have a tape of a radio broadcast from 1980 that blows this set away).