CMU

Opening on the atrocious (but thankfully short) title track, CMU offers the much better Archway 272, with mellotrons and a Sinclair-like fuzzed-out organ as well as a Rhodes, all courtesy of newcomer Leary Hasson. This track ends with a pulled saturated mike jack, but immediately goes into Song From The 4th Era that could be from Peter Hammill's Fool's Mate album. The meditative 7-mins Distant Thought retains the slight Hammill vocal influence, but the music is more in the Yes realm (all things considered). Closing up the first side is Doctor, another Joseph tune where only the bass seems alive with his acoustic guitar, until the 2/3 of the song, where Rhodes intervene as well, turning it nicely around for us progheads.

As a contrast to the five Joseph-penned tracks of the first side, there is only two longer ones on the flipside: the almost 10-mins Hamlett-penned Dreams and the 10-mins+ Hasson-written Lightshine. The former starts as a smooth gliding track, punctuated with Neil Young-like guitar interventions (Thinking of his Nowhere album), before the guitar goes funky and the Rhodes arrive for a verse, then the track plunges into a psyched dreamland for the following verse, the guitar sounding Hendrix-ey, this morphing into a slow ascending riff under the patronage of a fuzzed-out organ of Hasson and more changes coming up. Lightshine is a piano-written track, but after the intro comes a Moog interlude ala Emerson's Lucky Man. The track later grows into a raga where both singers trade verses than spreads its wings over vast Caravan-like soundscapes; Hasson's fuzzed out organ helping so.

As you could read in my reviews of CMU, there isn't much original or innovative and their influences are a bit too clear, but on the whole despite its ugly sleeve, Space Cabaret is an enjoyable but unessential piece of early prog rock. I'd say that this album is slightly better than Open Spaces, but this is marginal enough to say that it would a difficult choice to choose only one?. But ultimately this one gets the edge.

Opening on the quirky and mad Henry track, CMU offers a cool eclectic music that borders pop music, but remains "rock" enough to interest most progheads, with plenty of tempo changes and fun twists. Voodoo Man is a blues with an early-Doors vibe. As you'll guess by reading the title of the following track, we have another blues-rock track, this time more pedestrian and acoustic and overstaying a bit its welcome, even if it has a controlled chaos passage and ending. Chantecleer is probably the most experimental track of the album with its electronics twiddlings and it is probably the main reason for this group's presence on this site.

Opening the flipside is a slow uninteresting Japan track, where the group tries to sound Asian, but only succeeds to India's level. The Zappa-esque vocals of Clown are much catchier, but I am reminded of 10CC or later70's Queen. The hippy-like Mystical Sounds features flutes. The epic title track Open Space is the other cornerstone of the album, opening on a dronal violin and very slow drums, creating an intense and anxious climate as the violin cranks up slowly the power and speed. I can't help but think of String Driven Thing's Machine That Cried at this point. Unfortunately the crescendo dips into a black hole, from which the band will take a couple of minutes to escape, but once it does, it has morphed into a slight mid-eastern influenced jazz feel that slowly increases intensity only to plunge again a the black hole and remain there.

PS: the See For Miles 2on1 CD released in 93 is unfortunately missing one of this album's key track, Chantecleer, for time reasons, so if you're really interested in the group, try out the brand-new Esoteric single-album reissue. Not quite essential and even less groundbreaking, but definitely worth throwing an ear on it to check out the light gentle madness that shook these guys