BINGO

After the album 'Trinity' Rick van der Linden was removed from the band Ekseption because the other band members wanted to have more individual freedom and did not like Rick's stronghold on the music and the development of the band. This turned out to be a BIG mistake, because Rick's successor, Hans Jansen, did not have the same fire as Van der Linden, often Jansen sounds lukewarm, and in addition to that Van der Linden was much more classical oriented and used different voicings for chords he used, he had much better chops, and whereas Rick avoided the Fender Rhodes electric piano sound on albums, Jansen uses it wherever he can. As a result, the music on this first Ekseption 'New Formula' album is much more Jazz-rock oriented than previous albums, and it sounds very different due to Rick's absence. It does not mean that this is a bad album; if you set your expectations aside it definitely has its good moments. Listen for example to Jan Vennik's songs 'Nightwalk', and 'De fietser', or the track 'Sunny revival, co-written with Hans Jansen. But then there are tracks like 'From Ekseption', where Ekseption sounds like studio musicians freaking around. All in all I am divided over this album, and I would rate it as 'reasonably well, but non essential'. If there was an option for 2.5 stars, I would choose for it.