CHIMERA

Although Duncan Mackay's debut solo album doesn't offer anything truly mind-blowing - his style of keyboard playing here owes a lot to Keith Emerson, and between The Nice, ELP, Beggar's Opera and countless others this is territory which had been well-explored by the time 1974 rolled around - it does at least establish him as a very capable performer as well as a reasonable composer. Duncan performs with minimal accompaniment by Mike Gray on drums and brother Gordon Mackay on violin and piano; for the most part, though, Duncan carries the performance by himself, and does show with a little more subtlety than Emerson typically does, though he's able to bring the bombast to bear too.