Signia Alpha is a musical project led by the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter Matt Webster. After the release of the acclaimed Entropy LP from 2023 a new mini album Wonderland was released early 2025. Main musician Matt Webster provides drums, guitars, keyboards and vocals on this new release. He is helped out by a host of guest musicians making contributions on several compositions. We have here Paul Gray (The Damned, Eddie & The Hot Rods) who adds his distinctive Rickenbacker bass guitar to the title track, the instrumental For Your Ears Only and the Gothic Moonlight. Furthermore we have Harris (Chaing, Grim) who sings co-lead vocals on Wonderland and Moonlight and narrates the sci-fi adventure that is A Slave To Enterprise and adds various guitars. Also contributing is Paul Tunnicliffe (Slammer, Chaing) who co-writes and sings Anyway and Starlight. We have here Simon 'Nogsy' Nolan (SpyBand, Zed), who adds acoustic guitar and backing vocals to Wonderland. Mark Cranmer (Vegetable Section) played bass guitar on A Slave To Enterprise. And finally guitarist Wulf Ingham lends his psychedelic solos to a couple of tracks and harmonica to the acoustic Anyway. Wonderland is announced as a 7-track EP, however with a total time of 40 minutes you can hardly speak of an EP anymore. For me this is a full album thanks to the addition of three bonus tracks. However this is an album which is not really a progressive rock album as we normally review on this website. It is more a song orientated album on which we can hear influences from Hawkwind (overall feeling), XTC (A Slave To Enterprise), Led Zeppelin (Anyway), The Beatles (For Your Ears Only) and The Damned (Moonlight). Musical highlights are songs such as A Slave To Enterprise (thanks to the nice guitar parts) and the instrumental For Your Ears Only (nice instrumental parts). As for the bonus tracks. These are cover versions of bands that might have influenced Matt Webster. Nice'N'Sleazy (The Stranglers),The Call Up (The Clash) and Guns Of Brixton (The Clash) however do not add much extra to the album. They sound like modern versions of the originals. Nothing more nothing less. As mentioned before, Wonderland is not really a progressive rock album. It moves more to the usual standard rock sound of many British bands who come up with not too complex tunes. Therefore, I will not give it a rating. It is nice to hear a couple of times but for the more complex prog tunes I prefer to listen to other bands! Henri Strik (edited by Dave Smith) Where to buy? |
