RICK WAKEMAN, JEFF WAYNE & KEVIN PEEK: BEYOND THE PLANETS

This not in fact a Rick Wakeman album, and although he does play on it. Kevin Peek (of Sky) would appear to be the catalyst of the project. Wakeman once toured Australia with Sky where this album was recorded, and presumably that is when this collaboration was born. "Beyond the planets" was released by the Telstar label, who are better known for compilation albums of hit singles. While the album is not actually credited to anyone as such, the cover does bear the names of Wakeman, Peek and Jeff Wayne in large print, and those three do contribute to greater or lesser degrees.

"Beyond the planets" is essentially the performance of Holst's "The planets" in a rock context. Wayne's contribution is limited to the composition of an Overture for the album. As this ends, some brief narration by Patrick Allen is heard. Allen does a great impression of Richard Burton, which when combined with Wayne's distinctive sound, immediately creates echoes of "War of the worlds". Allen returns a couple of times during the album to link tracks together with further brief narration.

The familiar introduction to "Mars" (as used by Rainbow on "Eyes of the world" among many others) then takes over, and we launch into a full rendition of "The Planets suite". The music is performed dramatically and faithfully throughout, with Peek using various guitar sounds according to the mood of the piece. It's hard to identify accurately Wakeman's contribution. If you read the sleeve notes closely, they indicate that Greg Schulz is the primary keyboards player on the album. Clearly the label felt he was not sufficiently well known to mention his name on the cover though. Wakeman is credited as playing "Additional keyboards" on "Venus", Saturn" and "Neptune" only.

The album closes with a brief Wakeman composition "Beyond", which is little more than a fanfare ending. Wakeman does however appear to be the main performer on the track.

While Jeff Wayne's involvement is brief, "War of the worlds" is probably a pretty good reference point for the music here, although there are no vocals apart from the short narrations. Those familiar with Holst's will find much to enjoy here in this prog sounding performance of his most famous work.

Foot note - One major irritation is the discrepancy between the track listing on the sleeve, and the track numbering on the CD. The sleeve shows 12 tracks, while the CD has 8. This is primarily due to the fact that the narrations are integrated into the adjoining tracks for numbering purposes on the CD. It does make selective playing of a particular "planet" something of a challenge though!

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