ENCORE (LIVE 1977)

As their first live album, also this "Encore" contains only previously unreleased tracks. All the four are instrumentals and the track titles are a sort of a tribute to the hosting country. I don't see other reasons to give a name like "Cherokee Lane" to a spacey track other than the fact that it has been recorder during a tour in the USA. I have to say that I hear some reminds to Gershwin and Copland here and there, or at least it seems to me. As on Stratosphear the tracks are less experimental and a bit more structured and melodic respect to the first "pink" period. In the middle of the track there's effectively a part with a flute sound that seems connected in some way to native american's music so to partially justify the title track.

"Monolight" is opened by a piano solo. Something unusual with TD until now. What the piano plays makes me think to the Wright's effort on the studio disc of Ummagumma, but I have to say that (I think it's) Franke is more classically skilled. Then when the dreamy keyboards join piano, we have what I can consider the first newage piece of this band. It's just for few seconds, anyway. Spacey noises like in the middle section of Saucerful of Secrets come to make clear which band we are listening to. Unfortunately this is quickly replaced by a trivial electronic ultra-melodic part that could be used as soundtrack for a 70s erotic movie. As usual, after other 5 minutes (we are at minute 10 more or less), the music changes to something less trivial and at the end the trivial moment can be forgiven.

"Coldwater Canyon" is another electronic suite (what else?) in which we can hear Edgar Froese's guitar in a good solo accompanied by rhytmic bass notes. Some keyboard accents remind to Oldfield's Tubular Bells, but in the first 10 minutes of the tarck is the guitar which dominates. After the first 10 minutes, while the bass line remains unchanged there's section with Froese playing acidly like in some psychedelic proto-prog acts. The final of the song has chords and sounds that can be found in Bo Hansson's Lord of the Rings.

Finally "Desert Dream". It has a very appropriate beginning. Even if we speak of pink period of TD, I think that the only Pink Floyd influence that's recurring often in TD's musc is from Saucerful of Secrets. This is my favourite album's track. The only one which has the spacey sounds and the athmospheres reminding of Georgy Ligeti and contemporary classics as in Zeit. After the usual 5 minutes a compulsive bass, like a heartbit introduces the second darker section. A sound of clavinet, electronic of course, drives it. It's like passing from the initial phase of sleep to a deep REM phase, specially when the music turns again to totally spacey (at about minute 10 as usual). The melodic final (a spaghetti-western like trumpet) appears to be another tribute to the hosting country, but it's an excellent diversion from their usual things. If all the tracks were of this kind this would have been a five stars album. Unfortunately this is the exception, so my final rate is only three stars.