A SPOONFUL OF TIME

This recent-ish release, masquerading as a NEKTAR album, can be taken as another Billy Sherwood 'Prog Collective' project. Indeed, the current line-up of Nektar, featuring only 2 of the 'classic' formation in Roye Albrighton (guitars/vocals) and Ron Howden (drums/vocals), are joined by keyboardist Klaus Henatsch and multi-intstrumentalist/vocalist Billy Sherwood to form the core of the band. Then we have help from all sorts of top-notch musicians from Marillion's Mark Kelly, to Brainticket's Joel Vandroogenbroeck, Billy Sheehan to Rick Wakeman. I gather the 'lion's share' of the recording layed on Roye's shoulders, and helped re-ignite the Nektar brand. The songs are all 'classic radio songs' from the 70's, and actually vary little from the originals. They are mostly better and interesting selections from those days of 'hits', but unless you already appreciate songs like Steve Miller's Fly Like An Eagle, The Doors' Riders On The Storm, and even Gary Wright's Dream Weaver, this will be 'just another' covers album. From the 14 songs here, I was only unaware of Neil Young's Old Man, which features guest David Cross (King Crimson) on violin. Recommended highlights here being a very pretty 6min version of Floyd's Wish You Were Here, with the featured guest being the late, great EDGAR FROESE on keyboards, Riders On The Storm featuring a superb performance on the Hammond from legendary Rod Argent. A suitable Roxy Music tune in Out Of The Blue features Hawkwind's Simon House on violin, replacing Eddie Jobson's stellar performance on the 1974 original. 10CC are represented by a sweet rendition of I'm Not In Love, beautifully ethereal, and having a super Moog solo from Wakeman. The soul hit For The Love Of Money, which is played to death throughout the media, features guest drummer Ian Paice (Deep Purple), and woodwinds eccentric Nik Turner on sax - this lengthy rendition adding some deliciously spacey grooves, background mellotron sounds and suitable jamming from all. Having been fortunate enough to have caught up with Klaus H at an NYC Nektar gig, from memory he said the idea was suggested by manager John Lappen, immediately jumped-on by Roye and Billy, and was a lot of fun to work on. Definitely a solidly good album, perhaps a little light on the 'Prog', but an enjoyable listen never-the-less. 3.5 stars.