ASYLUM

Cressida's second album slipped out posthumously, the band having broken up a few months before. That's a shame, because it sounds like they were going in a very interesting direction with this one, both allowing in some jazz-rock influences filtered via the Canterbury scene as well as playing up the psychedelic side of their sound. The end result is a curious mixture both of the current progressive sounds of the early 1970s and the head music roots of the prog scene. It's a charming listen which manages to be accessible without dumbing down what the band are trying to do, and provides a sound which grew on me rapidly. A slightly different prospect than their debut, but the musical growth on display is substantial; that they never managed to take it further at the time is a real loss to the prog scene.