HEMISPHERES

I enjoy all of Rush's music and I adore some of it. This album is a step up, to me, in that I prefer it to all of the previous releases barring the monster album 2112. I adore "The Trees" and "La Villa Strangiato" is a brilliant piece of musical work as is "Cygnus X-1 Book 2 Hemispheres". This is not 2112 for me however it's a very good album that admittedly took some getting used to as at first it was difficult for me to find cohesion in the first track. The keyboard synthesizer sound, at times, I find hasn't dated very well but it doesn't detract from the music much once I get into it. I've deliberated long and hard on whether to give this offering a three or a four star rating and I can't but award four stars. This is prog for the Seventies but it does have relevance today if only to recapture that 70's thing again for a while and to understand where prog as we know it came from.