1984

The female singer Chaka Khan is nearly irreproachable, but I do not think her disco style gracefully merges with the Wakeman's style here: she makes some parts of this album too pop for the circumstance. I find that the modern keyboards sound too artificial: it seems odd, coming from a classically trained musician like Rick Wakeman. The electric guitar riffs are absolutely awful. Fortunately, there are many good complex keyboards parts, having a bit the style of the Rhapsodies album. Wakeman still uses here some vintage keyboards like organ and moog. Some bits are really made of relaxing & moving floating keyboards. Obviously, the album is torn between a pop dimension and a more serious, progressive & elaborated one. The presence of the surprising punk song "Proles" just simply confirms how unequal this album is.

Raing: 3.5 stars