WARM DUST

Third and last album from this sextet that can be included in the fairly closed category of brass rock. With only a change of drummer (Bedson coming in for Bailey), this album is the logical continuity of the two previous albums, entertaining us with a brass-heavy proto-prog rock that is often uneven, but can reach awesome height of brilliance. Coming with an rather amazing but naïve gatefold artwork depicting an orca whale having swallowed the band on their raft, along with a couple of sexy mermaids.

The first side is filled with short tracks (bar one) that have more to do with pure brass rock ala Blood Sweat & Tears than with prog, even if Long Road is one of those pleasers that even the harder-lined progheads would have a hard time resisting. The lengthier Hole In The Future has a long Indian-laced mid-section where Surguy's flute hold the centre stage before a fairly flawed Moog solo from Carrack destroys the previous effort and the track suddenly and abruptly (no warning) reverting to its original pattern. Gone are the superbly subtle chord changes of Rejection in their previous album, so much that this track has a "botch job" written all over it.

Obviously on the flipside, everyone is waiting for the 18-min+ Blind Boy suite to save the album, but one has to be patient and suffer a rather tedious (but thankfully short) rendition of Sibelius' Bare Mountain. However the Blind Boy suite does come in to save the album from sinking to depths of no-return, as it is easily the album's highlight and is often as inspired as the previous album was. The opening movement called trouble In The Mill sounds like a superb Oblivion Express track meeting Chicago Transit Authority for a full speed crash on rails. The following Clogs And Shawls is a quiet starter where Surguy's enchanted flute is leading through a slow crescendo with all the finesse you hoped they would developed on the first side of the album and finally climaxing with Walker's delicious gutsy vocals in the following self-titled movement. Superb stuff. But with such climax, the fall could only have been a shattering one, and the band takes a few minutes to collect the scattered parts and start reassembling them to rebuild an awesome groove called Slibe, where Soloman's sax might be reminiscent of Traffic's Chris Wood. Spine chills and goose bumps assured. The closing Dustbust is just a short recall of the original riff

With only the 5-part Blind Boy suite to save the album from drowning, that very same track being worth the ticket price alone, Warm Dust's last album is a very uneven affair, not matching the constancy and consistence of Peace For Our Time, but the album's centrepiece is definitely the group's best achievement without the slightest hint of a shadow of a beginning of a doubt. Hard not to give it at least equal rating than its predecessor.

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