3

I remember when I heard Focus for the first time six months ago, I was impressed by their song strangely titled "Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers!", and specially, by Akkerman's guitar skills. So I bought this album to start to dig into their music and, well, what an introduction! The numerous textures, the lovely vintage sound, the neo-classical passages combined with rock and the solos maje this a very good album, that makes me get more into the Focus musical world. For me, this is a truly neo-classical album because that influence is so evident and strong that makes this an unusual part in my CD collection. Also it has a raw, not-so-worked production, that makes me appreciate it even more.

All the songs here are worth some listens, but the highlights for me are: the opener "Round Goes The Gossip", which features the ocassional vocals (which always repeat the same, btw) and good melodies, always having that classical touch, and despite it can be quite repetitive, it's very enjoyable, at least to my ears; "Love Remembered" is more mellow, sad, cold, and is dominated by a very deep flute melody, another short but great track; "Sylvia" is completely catchy and features one of the most emotive and intense melodies I've EVER heard, Akkerman creates a lovely atmosphere with that melody, and all the song builds around it, it's a memorable piece of music, unbelievable!; "Focus III" is more quiet and emotive, and goes growing and progressing around another fantastic melody by Jan's guitar, reaches a nice climax, and there's when I thought this disc worthed my money; immediately to "Focus III" goes "Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers!", a long song I loved from the beginning, this one, while not being carefully composed (as is almost the rest of the album), it's a kind of Jam with amazing keys, flute and guitar solos, and a great 9/8 riff. The same thing with "Anonymous Two", but this one gets unnecesarily long (26 minutes), and can bore after some time.

Overall, "Focus III" is a nice journey to cold lands, 67 minutes of great neo classical music, in other words, real Symphonic Prog. It served to me as a good introduction to the band, and of course I'm looking forward to more albums of this genious dutch. I recommend it!

Rating: 4.0/5