Chula Vista

Howe and Wakeman too. Those albums weren't well received when they were released. It took some years for them to grow on folks. Honestly, I remember being disappointed with them (especially with Howe's).

His was all over the place and highlighted his less than stellar songwriting and.... ahem, mediocre vocals.
Wakeman and Anderson's were more composed but ridiculously self indulgent and nowhere near a Yes fix.
Only Fish out of Water did pretty well right away but really only based on the opening track.

I still listen to Fish and Olias but haven't heard the other two in forever.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Queen Boo

Olias of Sunhillow is definitely not for everyone, it's very new agey and yes it's a bit silly but it's beautifully crafted, there's none of the instrumental flashiness of a Yes record, it's just pure vibes.

Fish Out of Water is closer to sounding like a Yes album, the presence of Bruford and Moraz certainly helps with that, though you've also got other instruments in the mix like flute and sax. The songs are not quite Yes quality but Squire's bass playing is in top form and more than enough reason to give it a listen.

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Synthgirl

I'm a huge fan of Wakeman's solo stuff from that period, especially Journey to the Center of the Earth. I personally love the over the top bombast of it all, but I definitely get why it would tip the scale into cheese for some.

Chula Vista

Bombast? Whatever do you mean?

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Trollheart

And that's only for the acoustic numbers!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Last time we looked into the Five Decades of Prog was nearly two years ago now, and we had come around again to the 1980s, which means we continue, finally, after a very long pause indeed, with an album from the 1990s. Let’s not go for something obvious though. How about this?


Album title: Stardust We Are
Artist: The Flower Kings
Nationality: Swedish
Year: 1997
Chronology: 3
The Trollheart Factor: 1

Track Listing: In the Eyes of the World/A Room with a View/Just this Once/Church of Your Heart/Poor Mr. Rain’s Ordinary Guitar/The Man Who Walked with Kings/Circus Brimstone/Crying Clown/Compassion/Pipes of Peace/The End of Innocence/Merrygoround/Don of the Universe/A Day at the Mall/Different People/Kingdom of Lies/If 28/Ghost of the Red Cloud/Hotel Nirvana/Stardust We Are
Comments: I know very little about this band, though they are supposed to be quite famous and popular. I enjoyed one album by their lead guitarist Roine Stoit, and I think I may have heard something like The King Biscuit Hour? Hmm. No. Doesn’t exist. Must have dreamed that one. Anyway, I read that in fact the band were formed to support Stolt on the tour for his solo album I referred to, his third, called, wait for it, The Flower King, and then took on a life of their own. With Stolt or without him? Let’s see: with. Okay.

On the face of it, this looks pretty daunting. Not only is it a double album, topping out at well over an hour and ten minutes, not only has it ten - count ‘em! Ten! - instrumentals, which in fact makes half the album instrumental, but it also has a closing track running to 25 minutes! This will either be a joy or an ordeal, guess we’ll find out which soon enough. Pretty spacey, ambient opening as “In the Eyes of the World” gets us going then kicks up into a big dramatic and bouncy keyboard run, part of the riff of Genesis’s “Duke’s Travels” in there lads! Powerful percussion, good guitar, there’s a lot crammed into this opening track, though then again it is ten minutes long. And not even close to being the longest on this double album, as already mentioned. Good start though, gets quite catchy as it goes along.

Nice little instrumental (only nine to go!) and we’re into “Just This Once”, a sort of staggered uptempo with again I have to say a very Genesis keyboard arpeggio running through it (“Fountain of Salmacis”? Yeah, “Fountain of Salmacis”) with an ominous dark kind of atmosphere about it. It’s good but I wonder if the album is going to suffer from too many long tracks? I mean, that’s almost eight minutes, then the next one is nine, though “Church of Your Heart” seems like it might be a ballad, and is quite nice. Some lovely introspective guitar work here. Can see lighters waving in the crowd for this at live performances. Nice sort of Church organ (not that surprisingly, given the title) Toccata going on too. The vocal is good but to be fair nothing terribly special. Something that sounds like a Christmas carol in there too. Hmm.

Into the first of four instrumentals, one after the other, with the tender “Poor Mr. Rain’s Ordinary Guitar” followed by “The Man Who Walked with Kings”, with again I feel a very Genesis sound to it, stronger and mostly driven on keys and harder guitar, the third being a carnival opening into a bloody twelve-minute instrumental (!) called “Circus Brimstone”, which gets all kind of dark and doomy and scary pretty quickly. Could be good. And it is, but I really struggle to keep my attention on an instrumental track that runs for so long, and there’s another one coming. I’m not sure this layout is a good idea. Now there’s some sort of backward masking going on, which I personally think is just silly. At least “Crying Clown” is less than a minute long and just a sort of coda to “Circus Brimstone”, bit Waits-y to be honest. “Compassion” then ends the first disc, with an odd kind of Waters-style echoing vocal against a dark ominous beat, and to be honest it’s the first one that’s grabbed my attention since the opener. It’s also not too long, about five minutes with some sort of hidden track - yes, another fucking instrumental, you guessed it - near the end.

On to disc two we go, and we’re back with the church organ blasting its way into what is now our sixth instrumental (seventh if you count the hidden track), “Pipes of Peace”, thankfully again a very short one, just over a minute, and then another epic, eight minutes plus of “End of the Innocence” - these guys just do not do short tracks, do they? This one is not bad, got a sort of lounge feel to it in ways, with some jazzy piano and some almost cinematic synth. “Merrygoround” continues the kind of circus theme of the last part of the first disc, and it’s very peppy and upbeat with fine keys and piano, but again I cannot get away from those Genesis comparisons: I just keep hearing riffs from Duke and Nursery Cryme everywhere. And another instrumental in “Don of the Universe”, another long one at over seven minutes. I do like it, but damn it’s hard to keep listening to all these instrumentals. And there are three more to go. This one seems to use a Floyd riff off I think The Wall. Nice usage of what sounds like birdsong, and then sitar is cool.

The next instrumental is very short, just over a minute and basically just some electric piano or organ noodling, leading us into “Different People”, with sounds of traffic and then an upbeat synth line with some acoustic guitar and quite a catchy hook. It’s a bit hippy-dippy but not bad, and then “Kingdom of Lies” is a much rockier effort, with again the Duke sound very much to the fore. It quickly breaks down into a sort of blues beat though, swaggering along with all but a sense of Bob Seger to it, quite different I must say. “If 28”, the penultimate instrumental (how can I write such a line? But so it is) is a lovely slow stately piano piece with an edge of sombre mourning about it, then “Ghost of the Red Cloud” has more than a touch of reggae about it, it’s decent enough but kind of meh in other ways, before the final instrumental “Hotel Nirvana” takes us to the closer, the epic 25-minute title track.

Now the opening of “Stardust We Are” bears a very close resemblance to “Forever Morning” from Tony Banks’ solo album A Curious Feeling, which for me just reinforces the idea that this band, or at least their keysman, is influenced by the Genesis legend. Not surprisingly with a track running for a quarter of an hour, it opens on a long instrumental, nearly four minutes before any vocals come in. I read that this has become The Flower Kings’ signature tune, so can only assume it’s seen as a sort of “2112”, “Supper’s Ready” or “Close to the Edge” among their fans. Only in prog, right? I mean, it sounds okay, and given a few more listens I might appreciate it more, but it takes a really special track to keep my interest straight for 25 minutes, and this ain’t it. Genesis knew how to do it. VDGG knew how to do it. Sometimes. Rush knew how to do it. Arena know how to do it. To me, Yes do not know how to do it, nor do IQ or Spock’s Beard, and the Flower Kings definitely do not know how to do it. Attention just wandered till it was finally over. Not that I thought it was bad, but I couldn’t keep concentrating on it.

Track(s) I liked: Church of Your Heart, Poor Mr. Rain’s Ordinary Guitar, Compassion, If 28

Track(s) I didn't like: Nothing I didn’t actively dislike, just a lot that passed me by.

One standout: Not really no.

One rotten apple: Again, not really. This might have been due to the fact that the album failed to really hold my attention.

Overall impression: I think asking anyone other than a fan to sit through a dozen instrumentals, four of them in a row, one of them twelve minutes long, and then hit them right at the end with a 25-minute epic is too much to expect. I was not quite drained, but more frustrated by the end, and certainly relieved. If the album had been shorter, or had less instrumentals, maybe I might have enjoyed it more. Guess we’ll never know, but on the basis of this album I don’t see myself becoming a fan of these guys. Although a 90s album, I think this could be guilty of that accusation that was levelled at many of the larger prog bands at the end of the 70s, that of overblown, complacent self-indulgence, of being more concerned with how long they could make a song than what was in it, and of being bloated and irrelevant. Stardust We Are? More like Stardust Me Arse. Sorry.

Rating: 4.9/10

Future Plan: Probably avoid the Flower Kings, or else invest in some weedkiller.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhRQ-uI_0JU

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Trollheart

Always nice to just feature one of the albums you've enjoyed personally, that may not fit into any category or work into any feature, but even so is nevertheless one of


(Incidentally, I know this will also be coming up in my Yes thread, but we've almost two decades to go, album-wise, before that, so why not? It's a great album in its own right).




Album title: Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe
Artist: Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe
Nationality: English
Year: 1989
Chronology: 1 of 1
The Trollheart Factor: 10

Conceived as Jon Anderson's attempt to break out of the strictures he felt the recent Yes albums (90125, Big Generator) had placed on him, this was a project which involved former members of Yes coming together to record what was essentially a new Yes album done the “old Yes” way. You can tell by the names who were in the project - Rick Wakeman of course, legendary keysman on some of Yes's best albums, Steve Howe, who left to join Asia, and drumming icon Bill Bruford from King Crimson. Contractual and copyright problems prevented the new supergroup from using the name Yes, so after some brainstorming they decided the safest option was to just use their names. Makes for a long album title, but hey, like everyone else, we'll refer to them from now on as ABWH, okay?

I seem to recall I bought this album on the strength of the cover alone (though of course I knew the names of the performers, so knew what the music was likely to sound like) - who wouldn't, with that fantastic Roger Dean artwork, which certainly appealed to someone who was getting into the likes of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo? I bought this on vinyl originally, and it was presented in a beautifully lavish gatefold sleeve. To be honest, I had never been a huge fan of Yes, but I had enjoyed the last two albums, and I liked Rick Wakeman's work. I was also familiar with Anderson's collaborations with another of my favourite artists of the time, the singularly talented Vangelis. So it wasn't a difficult sell as far as I was concerned.

But the needle tells all (sigh! Ask your parents, willya? MAN I feel old!), so what sort of music have we here? There's a deceptively gentle opening, tinkling piano as Wakeman introduces the first piece of music, and you feel yourself settling back. BAD idea! Within a few moments Bruford's drums come crashing through, the pace jumps to about third or fourth gear, and the first song is well into its stride. The clear, piercing voice of Jon Anderson dispels any initial belief that this may have been an instrumental. As it goes, ABWH is broken into four multi-part compositions, with some self-contained complete tracks complemeting these larger works, but all seems to feed into the one overall concept, and the album plays very much like one huge slice of music, almost an hour in length. The aforementioned piano intro is called “Sound”, and forms the first of a triplet of songs that make up the first composition, called “Themes”. As the drums kick in and the singing begins, we're into “Second Attention”, which goes on for about half the track. Really, it's a bit fatuous to call “Sound” a third of the track, as it's really nothing more than a piano intro, a few seconds long, not even a minute really, and the rest of “Themes” is divided between “Second Attention” (the larger part) and “Soul Warrior”, which is totally instrumental, and runs for just over a minute and a half.

The next track is a self-contained one, just over three minutes long. “Fist of Fire” is much slower, heavier and darker than the previous. There's a real sense of ominousness about this: stabbing keyboards, thumping drums and Anderson's urgent vocal carrying the track. ”Through the darkest age/ We could surely fly/ Through the darkest age/ With the fist of fire.” There are some great keyboard solos by the Wizard King here, good backing vocals too (multi-tracked?). This leads into the second multi-part composition, called “Brother of Mine”, on which Asia and ex-Yes keysman Geoff Downes lends a hand with the writing. The whole thing starts off with a gong sound and then a slow, soulful intro: ”So, giving all the love you have/ Never be afraid/ To show your heart.” It opens with “The Big Dream”, a jaunty romp which takes us up to “Nothing Can Come Between Us”, where the song speeds up a bit and the theme from “Brother of Mine” is repeated, as happens throughout the multi-parters. Nice guitar work here, before things really take off for the final part, “Long Lost Brother of Mine”, which brings the piece full circle.

The way the parts of the multi-compositional pieces meld and flow together effortlessly makes it somewhat difficult to note where one part ends and another begins, and there's definitely no gaps as the parts slide from one to another like tributaries of a river coming together. It's not a criticism, nor is it a problem when listening to the album, as the music is so uniformly brilliant that you really cease to care what one section is called, and just really listen to it as one continuous piece of wonderful music, four legends at the very pinnacle of their game, consummate professionals working not to outdo each other, but to come together in such a way as to almost become one single entity, dedicated to producing the very best music they can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwFEQnVxfRk
After the multi-layered “Brother of Mine” there's a single track next, but no less brilliant in its way. “Birthright” has a dark, brooding tone, with a steady drumbeat, and chronicles the lasting effect on the Australian Aborigines of the nuclear tests carried out by Britain at Maralinga in the late fifties and early sixties: ”This place ain't big enough/ For stars and stripes/ This place ain't big enough/ For red and white.” About halfway through it morphs into something of an Irish jig, and gets a little faster as it approaches its conclusion. The song is really a vehicle for Steve Howe's guitar, and does he dazzle! It's followed by one of only two ballads on the album, the gently understated, almost hymnal “The Meeting”, where Anderson and Wakeman bring things down to a whisper with one of the nicest songs I've heard in a very long time. The gentle piano perfectly complements Jon Anderson's choir-boy voice, and yes, there is something spiritual about the song, even in the lyric: ”Surely I could tell/ If you asked me, Lord/ To board the train/ My life, my love/ Would be the same.” It closes the first side of the album in gentle triumph, almost a lullaby, fading slowly away but remaining in the ears long after the last chords have been played, and the last notes have receded into the night.

Side 2 kicks off with another multi-composition, under the banner heading of “Quartet”. Featuring, yes you guessed it, four parts, it starts off with “I Wanna Learn”, a boppy, joyful, almost childlike song about discovery and wonder, as Anderson cries ”I wanna know more about life/ And things that can fly in between my mind/ I wanna change all that I dream about/ My waking and my so many lives.”

It's relatively short, about two minutes, but then the whole track is just over nine, so with four sections about two per section is right. Second part is “She Gives Me Love”, keeping the happy theme going and essentially continuing on the same song. Anderson cheekily namechecks one of the old Yes songs as he sings ”Through the gates of delirium so fast...” Apparently there are other examples of this throughout the album, though not being a 70s-era fan of Yes I couldn't point them out for you. “She Gives Me Love” seamlessly becomes “Who Was the First”, which is almost exactly the same melody but with different lyrics, until the climax of the track is reached with “I'm Alive”, where the theme from “The Meeting” returns, to slow the track down and bring it to a gentle and very satisfying close.

“Teakbois”, the next self-contained track, I could in all honesty have done without. It's totally anachronistic, basically the song of a band forming behind a really annoying Calypso beat. It has its moments, but if there's a bad track on the album (and there really isn't), then this is it. Unfortunately it also runs for over seven minutes, close to but not equalling the three multi-parters so far, which is a pity, as the space could have been used for a much more appropriate song I think this was just basically a jam for the guys, a bit of fun. Not for me, though...

Luckily things are soon back on track for the final multi-composition, as “The Order of the Universe” takes the album towards its ending. Another nine-minute piece, it kicks off with a powerful dramatic instrumental which goes under the title of “Order Theme”, before the main part of the song, “Rock Gives Courage” blasts in, a real hard-rocker in the mould of (sorry guys, I know you don't want to relate to 90125 but...) “Owner of a Lonely Heart” or “Our Song”. Things speed up then for the third part, “It's So Hard to Grow”, reintroducing the central theme: ”You can't imagine it/ How hard it is to grow/ You can't imagine it/ Can you imagine/ The order of the universe?” The remaining part, called “The Universe” is basically an instrumental ending to the song, a retracing of the introduction.

As side 1 ended with a lovely little ballad, so does side 2, and indeed the album, come to a relaxing close, particularly after the histrionics of “The Order of the Universe”, with a beautiful little acoustic number, on which Anderson's old mate Vangelis lends a land with the composing. It's VERY Jon Anderson: ”Let us be together/ Let's pretend that we are free/ Let's all be where the angels find us/ We all have the key.” There's minimal or no percussion in the song, and it's just Steve Howe and Jon Anderson finishing the album off in fine style. ”Something that I feel/ To pour upon my soul/ Countenance of love/ For one and all”.

Amen, brother.

There never was another ABWH album. Two years later the two “sides” of Yes resolved their differences, and the result was Union, released under the Yes banner. Although some of its music is similar to ABWH, there are no multi-part pieces on it, and it's not a concept album, so although it is regarded in some circles as the 2nd ABWH album, to me it's a Yes album, pure and simple. An excellent one, it has to be said, but for all that, a Yes product and not a continuation of ABWH, although some songs on it were supposed to have found life on the projected follow up to ABWH. In this manner, I consider ABWH the album to be something of a rarity: unique in that it is at once an album by established members of a band, a new supergroup and a debut all in one, and is the only recorded example of this partnership (setting aside live recordings). For this reason alone it deserves to be listened to, and appreciated.

TRACK LISTING
1. Themes
i) Sound
ii) Second Attention
iii) Soul Warrior
2. Fist of Fire
3. Brother of Mine
i) The Big Dream
ii) Nothing Can Come Between Us
iii) Long Lost Brother of Mine
4. Birthright
5. The Meeting
6. Quartet
i) I Wanna Learn
ii) She Gives Me Love
iii) Who Was the First
iv) I'm Alive
7. Teakbois
8. The Order of the Universe
i) Order Theme
ii)Rock Gives Courage
iii) It's So Hard to Grow
iv) The Universe
9. Let's Pretend

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Chula Vista

LOVE The Flower Kings! Ever checked out the Prog supergroup he was in, Transatlantic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_(band)

Great stuff.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Trollheart

I've heard Transatlantic, but more for the fact that Trewavas is in it. Decent band, can't recall being entirely blown away. Sort of the same with Edison's Children.

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Comus

I'm glad I made a bortposting reaction for exactly this type of post

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