Debut solo album from the Nathan Mahl and current Camel keyboards player, and it's a hot little album that is definitely worthy of all the praise that has been heaped upon it. For a start, much of the album is instrumental, including a massive twenty-nine minute track towards the end of the album. This track, and a couple of others, feature Hand Farm's guitarist Scott McGill guesting, and he helps take the music onto even greater heights. The vocals, where featured, are excellent, a bit John Wetton-like, while the instrumental work comes from an arsenal of keyboards, synths and guitars, all backed by some solid and tasty rhythm work. The music is original and exciting - firmly rooted in the classic prog traditions, but so wide-ranging as to avoid the tag of  “sounds like…” Lovers of real prog-rock from the 70's will get a kick out of this CD, but it's so much more than any retro style album, sounding fresh and alive every time you play it. The solos are direct, melodic and intricate throughout, ensuring that there’s always a consistent flow to the music. It is the sort of sound that you can hear many times over and never tire of, especially when the guitar, and sax on a couple of occasions, join in to add extra textural dimensions.

186158
Weight: 150.00 g

All right, so it’s like ELP! Not only is it a dead ringer for ELP, it’s first three albums – era ELP – Hammond organs thru Leslie speakers, church organ, synthesizers, piano, Fender Rhodes, harpsichord etc., plus, Par Lindh is joined by new fewer than nine other musicians on guitars, flutes, horns, bass and drums, and a small orchestra too – so it’s bombastic, over the top stuff for sure. Oh, did we tell you – this sounds like ELP – oh yes, of course I did! So, you know what to expect, now, don’t you. That’s right – ELP – oooh, and Mellotron Mk.V... oooh, and a female vocalist trying to be Renaissance’s  Annie Haslam, which can only be a good thing, so there’s none of yer droning Greg Lake style resonance on this sucker. As I leave the twilight zone with this fifty-two minute, 10-track album under my arm, I leave you with three words set in stone - Emerson, Lake & Palmer!!!

528968
Weight: 150.00 g

Through the mists of time (and about time) comes this much welcomed first time CD release of the legendary and only album recorded by Mainhorse. Recorded in 1971 and played to death by DJ Mike Harding on the UK’s BBC 'Sounds Of The Seventies' shows way back then, this band was most notable for introducing the world to the talents of one Patrick Moraz, the extraordinary synths / keyboards player who later went on to form Refugee with two ex-members of the Nice. Later he joined Yes for their ‘Relayer’ period and played a world tour with the band. The he became the Moody Blues keyboards player, with quite a few solo albums recorded in between. The album itself, is clearly and superbly rooted in the prog annals of the late 60’s / early 70's, and it is a real pearler from start to finish, evoking comparisons with England, Focus, The Nice, ELP, Supersister and early Genesis. Essential for Moraz fans but still a great prog archive album for the rest of us.

978706
Weight: 150.00 g

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Firstly, the recording quality of this live CD is excellent! Not only that, it’s a quintet line-up featuring none other than Mickey Simmonds on synths and keyboards, alongside the guitar, drum, bass, from the Berends bothers and Bob Eckman, plus the surprisingly excellent, if not exactly that many, vocals from Lisa Bouchelle. Starting with three, mid-length, classy and fiery real prog instrumentals that feature plenty of action from the synths and guitars, it reveals a really strong line-up that positively cooks on the gas. By the time you reach the first song on the album (track 4), with its soaring female vocals and multi-part harmonies, you’re convinced you’ve entered a somewhat more intense Lana Lane- Erik Norlander styled territory. Suffice to say that the instrumental work, the compositions, performance and ensemble work, throughout the album is excellent. In addition to the outstanding electric guitar and synths solos, the band have clearly been captured on one of those rare occasions, for any band, where everything falls exactly into place on the night, and the prog elements ignite to blow the top off both the building and the audience alike. It’s incendiary stuff that makes you wish you’d been there to capture the moment, but this CD is the next best thing, and one essential-listening reason for the existence of live CD’s. With tracks from five to over thirteen minutes, this is full of great playing and the vocalist’s best work to date, making for a highly recommended album.

384956
Weight: 150.00 g

If anything, even better than the first volume of this three-part concept album, and this one features just 5 tracks over almost one hour of amazing progressive sounds, where there is absolutely loads of space for the band to shine in all their instrumental glory. The Camel influences are there by the truckload, but this time around there is a much greater sense of urgency to the music, and the breadth of composition and delivery is just astounding, as synthesizers, organs, guitar and rhythm section fly through arrangements that are melodic and full-sounding, superbly produced and structured to perfection. The keyboard work from the current Camel ivories man Guy Leblanc is outstanding, as he adds his unique touch of fusion to the band’s overall sound. This album was one of the hottest albums of 2001 for us, as I’m sure it was for many others amongst the prog community far and wide – but it only tells one part of a story that is spread over two other albums of excellent music in: ‘Volume 1-Body Of Accusations’ and ‘Volume 3-The Sentence’- A prog-rock fans’ dream album for sure.

620439
Weight: 150.00 g

It almost seems a shame to pigeonhole this album as prog-rock, when it covers such a wide area of music within and around that genre. In its many wonders you’ll find traces of everything from modern King Crimson and King’s X to early 70’s Curved Air. ‘Expectations’ is a giant leap in the right direction from the previous two New Sun releases, as the band sound stronger and more assured than before, with songs to match and a much more confident vocal delivery. By and large it’s the quality of the material that is the ‘piece de resistance’ here, and a run through each of the tracks will quickly reveal its may qualities.

503777
Weight: 150.00 g

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The debut album from the second coming of Genesis – well, not literally, but in the absence of any real contenders to that crown, this is the closest you are ever going to get. The singer is an identikit Peter Gabriel on this and the latest album (with the band name changed to Watch), so this is certainly no fluke. The album reveals a set of strong and excellently arranged compositions, all sounding like classic early-mid seventies Genesis or early Marillion. The actual song writing is also quite superb, although the second album reveals an even more mature approach to it than this one does this, and that being the case, this album is very much the “calm before the storm”, in that it is a band who sound great but promise to sound positively mind-blowing later on, which, as we now know, is exactly what happened in the case of the Watch. Full of tremendously expressive multi-synth / Mellotron work, acoustic and electric Hackett-esque guitars, this is simply classic pog-rock, with original song writing and delivery at a peak, plus a vocalist you just won’t believe. Anyone who calls himself or herself a fan of classic Genesis just has to own this, and even more essentially, the Watch album that followed it.

696739
Weight: 150.00 g

Over an hour of synth dominated symphonic prog – Firstly, it's instrumental and extremely melodic. Secondly, its roots are firmly embedded in the camps of many a great 70's band, with elements of ’WYWH’-era Pink Floyd, ‘Spectral Mornings’ - era Steve Hackett and ‘Moonmadness’ - era Camel in particular. Within the 10 tracks you will encounter soaring electric guitar work and some great synth leads and backdrops, with rhythm guitars providing even more of a rich musical backcloth. From reflective and gentle passages to spiralling electric guitar and synth solo work, this is for anyone into dependable, excellently composed, arranged and played instrumental, non-fusion based melodic prog-rock. Click the extra info link for more details of this excellent album.

725929
Weight: 150.00 g

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