RELAYER

A slight breath of air away from Tales From Topographic Oceans, Relayer is still a dense and atmospheric record, and the overall conglomeration of sound in this album makes it distinct to other albums. However, the album seems to carry an uninspring tone throughout it's entirety. It's more of a meandering album, more heavy on melodic exploration and freedom. It's an intriguing concept, especially when thrown into decently coherent structure, and it's definitely something different, but it just doesn't grab you. A lot of things can be found in this album, a lot of solo work and the notes involved can be head-noddingly interesting, but there's not much muscle behind the work here. The highlight of the album is definitely Sound Chaser where the entire sound of the album hits it's creative peak musically and instrumentally. However, I'd pay half of the price of the album on a disc that just contains Sound Chaser rather than the no-more-than-decent entire album.