JOURNEY

After the somewhat uneven and somewhat uninspired album simply called "Kingdom Come", one couldn't be more pleasantly surprised with "Journey", BROWN's 1973 followup with KINGDOM COME. Drummer Martin "Slim" Steer and keyboardist Michael "Goodge" Harris are now out of the picture, leaving BROWN, with guitarist Andy Dalby and bassist Phil Shutt with American-born (from Detroit) Victor Peraino now handling the keyboard duties. But, what happened to the drummer? Didn't Arthur BROWN simply hire another drummer? No he didn't. Instead he bought himself a Bently drum machine and used that as a substitute for a real drummer. Now, this has got to be the most drastic sound change I have ever heard from a band. The Hammond organ is now history, Victor Peraino obviously preferred the Mellotron and the ARP 2600 synthesizer. The occasional nonsense and British cultural references of their previous album are luckily thrown in the trash, in place of a truly wonderful progressive space rock sound with sci-fi oriented lyrics.

The longest songs on the album tend to be the best, such as "Time Captives", "Gypsy", "Superficial Roadblocks", and "Come Alive", as the shorter pieces tend to exist as segues to the next song. The big exception being "Spirit of Joy", the closest thing to a pop hit (and in fact, the song was released as a single a couple months before the album came out), but even here you get treated with lots of bizarre electronic effects. But what I really love of this album is the amazing use of Mellotron and ARP 2600 synthesizer! It's so strange to think of Arthur BROWN ever being associated with the Mellotron, especially if you're only familiar with his 1968 THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN album (with the hit "Fire"), which tended heavily to the Hammond organ, but that's what you get here on "Journey", especially with "Gypsy", "Superficial Roadblocks" and "Spirit of Joy". This is truly a classic album, especially if you like both space rock and prog.