Jury's Verdict #2
On this page we will list a multiple review of a selection of 3 albums out of the (in our humble opinion) most important or interesting recent releases.
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Parzival's Eye Fragments
Full review
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Glass Hammer Three Cheers Of The Broken Hearted
Full review
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3rd World Electric Kilimanjaro Secret Brew
Full review
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Henri Strik |
When I heard that Chris Postl from
RPWL
was working on a solo project, I knew that he would
come up with something special. My confidence grew stronger as I heard that
Christina Booth
(Magenta), Alan
Reed (Pallas) and
Ian Bairnson
(Alan Parsons)
contributed to this album.
When I listened to Fragments
for the first time I found out that Chris had not
disappoint me. The entire album consists of a collection of great songs that
have something to tell music wise. Sure, we hear influences of Chris’s heroes
such as Pink Floyd and
Yes, but on this album Chris Postl shows
that he’s more than only the P in RPWL! Thumbs up and well done, Chris!
Rating:****+
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Sometimes your wife
comes home with a haircut you don’t like from the moment she enters the room.
However, as time goes by you get used to it and you almost forget how she
looked like before she went to the hairdresser. There’s a tendency to forget
how it was before and how you liked it the most. This is roughly how I felt
when I listened to the latest release of Glass Hammer.
Gone are all the epic pieces with references to the great seventies
bands such as Yes,
Kansas and ELP.
We hear rather short
songs instead with a fresh, new and modern sound. However, the more I played
the album, the more I began to like the songs. Nevertheless, I still prefer the
old stuff. Fortunately, they promised to return to their old style of music on
their next release. Well, that’s what I meant when I was talking about my wife’s
hairstyle…
Rating: **+
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Jazzrock and fusion
have always been musical styles that I enjoyed from time to time. However, when
the music gets too difficult I loose track. The jazzrock on
Kilimanjaro Secret Brew
was most of the time not that difficult, so I
could listen to it in a very comfortable way, taking me back to the days when
jazzrock bands like Weather Report,
Return To Forever and
The Mahavishnu Orchestra made
the same kind of music on a regular basis.
Rating: ***
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Peter Willemsen |
Parzivals Eye is the hobby band of bassist
Chris Postle from German
RPWL. Together
with a few big names in the prog rock scene such as guitarist
Ian Bairnson
(Alan Parsons) and singers
Alan Reed (Pallas)
and Christina
(Magenta), he recorded his first album
Fragments.
The result is quite surprising. Postle made a tastefully
arranged album with fine compositions in the vein of the best songs of
The Alan Parsons Project and
RPWL, but also echoes from
Pink Floyd can be heard. Most of the
songs contain fine and pleasant sounding harmony vocals. Alan Reed sings much
more subdued than he normally does on the Pallas-records. I think, he should
sing this way more often. All the songs are melodious, but sometimes tend to
become a bit monotonous and too simple. One of the finest songs is the
Graham Nash-cover Chicago sung by
Christina, but my personal highlight is Disguise
sung by Alan Reed with a bass pattern that sounds very much like Pink Floyd’s
The Wall. Every time you think the music
is getting a bit boring, there’s always a fine melodious guitar solo from Ian
Bairnson. If you like melodious rock songs with fine harmony vocals or the aforementioned
bands you should certainly listen to this album.
Rating: ***+
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Three Cheers Of The Broken Hearted
is already the tenth album made by the American band
Glass Hammer. The band still consists of core members
Fred Schendel and
Steve Babb. This time Susie Bogdanowitz
did most of
the vocal parts. Well, to be honest, I always had mixed feelings while
listening to the band’s music. The previous albums of Glass Hammer often
consisted of long epic compositions, but on this album we just hear a number of
rather poppy and as a consequence radio-friendly songs. It’s hard to compare
this album to any other Glass Hammer-album. No epics this time, but only short
songs with some quite good ones like Sun Down Shores
and the Magenta-like track Come On, Come On,
but also a rather irritating song like
Schrodinger’s Lament with hardly intelligible spoken words. Most of
the songs are mediocre, even boring sometimes. Fortunately, Bogdanowitz has a
fine voice, so it’s no punishment listening to this album, but that’s not
enough to call it an excellent or even a good album.
Rating: **
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In the seventies, I bought a number of jazzrock albums of which
Romantic Warrior by
Return To Forever and
Al DiMeola’s
Land Of The Midnight Sun still belong to my favourite ones. The
music on these albums proves to be just as the genre indicates: sometimes jazz,
sometimes rock, but most of the time a blend of these two genres.
3rd World Electric
is also labeled as jazzrock. It’s a new project of the all-round musician
Roine Stolt
(Flower Kings and more). After listening
twice to Kilimanjaro Secret Brew,
the debut album of 3rd World Electric, there’s only one conclusion
possible: this is pure jazz with a very annoying saxophone sound and I don’t
like jazz at all! Well, being a real symphomaniac, it wouldn’t be fair to
review this album. The musicality of the musicians on this album is beyond dispute,
but I simply don’t like jazz. This album maybe progressive, but in my opinion
it has nothing to do with prog or symphonic rock!
Rating: no rating
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André de Waal |
Parzivals Eye is the band of
Chris Postl, bass player with
RPWL.
It is almost inevitable that influences of this band and therefore by
definition of Pink Floyd seep through on
Fragments. However, the
compositions on this album are a bit more poppy than we’re used to from Postl’s
daytime band, maybe because of Magenta’s
Christina Booth who has an important
role on Fragments. The album opens
with the longest track Longings End.
For me, this song is the highlight of Fragments.
It sets the tone for the remaining songs: smooth singing lines, some spoken
words and nice harmonies. Often solo albums of members of successful prog bands
are disappointing, but that’s certainly not the case for
Chris Postl.
Rating: ****
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Successful
bands take a huge risk when changing their style of music which made them
famous. This doesn’t necessarily have to go wrong. Some groups like
Fleetwood Mac
actually became even more successful after the change! I doubt if this will
happen to Glass Hammer. This band,
widely known for their majestic epic songs, has now released an album full of
short songs, not one epic in sight. And this doesn’t work very well. I have
listened to Three Cheers For The Broken Hearted
countless times, but after a while my attention started to drift and
then suddenly the CD is finished. This cannot be the purpose of releasing
music, so I would suggest to the band to see this album as an incident and go
back to the old style of music.
Rating: *
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The latest project of Flower King’s
Roine Stolt takes us back deep into the
seventies to the fusion and jazzrock scene. The album cover reminds me of one
of the Miles Davis-albums, but the
music is pure Weather Report. The
dominant role of the sax and the percussion makes this mix of jazz, world and
rock played by 3rd World Electric
a real tribute to the music Joe Zawinul
and his men made in the early days. 3rd World Electric
also consists of excellent musicians, just as the groups in those days. All
tracks on this album last between five and ten minutes, which makes that the
listener manages to keep attention to the songs. There’s nothing original here,
but that was certainly not the intention of this group. They wanted to play
jazzrock and they do it quite well.
Rating: ****-
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