THE OLD ROAD

Martin Orford's final recording before his retirement from music (aside from a few live appearances now and then) isn't much of a step up from his previous solo album, Classical Music and Popular Songs. It's alright, but I think most neo-prog bands would expect more from the keyboard powerhouse of IQ and Jadis. In particular, whilst he seems to have tried to expand the range of instruments he uses aside from the keyboards, I wouldn't call him a sufficiently skilled multi-instrumentalist to really pull that off; his guitar playing is reasonable but not particularly special, whilst his efforts at lead vocals are... um... I'm just going to go with "regrettable" and leave it at that.

Prog fans in general may find the long list of guest stars exciting, though to be perfectly frank I think the main player here was simply not on form for this album. Considering that this was meant to be his final substantive musical statement, this is particularly regrettable.