IN TIME (WITH COCO ROUSSEL)

Kit Watkins' first solo album, "Labyrinth" was performed by himself and Coco Roussel, a drummer he had worked with while in Happy The Man. This album is more of a true collaboration, with both musicians sharing compositional duties.

The music, while considerably lighter than in "Labyrinth", still has ties back to the HTM albums. There is plenty of work in odd time signatures, and the song structures are mostly progressive for their time.

There are a few songs where Watkins begins to stray toward the new agey style that he would venture into on later albums, but at least these tracks are few, and reasonably short, and Roussel's percussion tends to keep them from becoming too bland.

While I wouldn't call this a great album, it has plenty of nice points, enough to make it worthwhile.

I bought this CD direct from Kit Watkins, obtaining the original with the black & white cover, not long after it was released.

For Happy the Man fans, mostly this music is a treat, very much in the vein that HTM mined with such enthusiasm.

Forte was for years my very favorite song, rich and deep, with some minor key phrasings interspersed with bursts of major key sunlight.

Another favorite is Over the Andes, a song that veers between a monumental effort through a cold and endless environment and the incandescence of achieving a major goal. Those kids of contrasts are a hallmark of solid satisfying prog rock.

Bob's Tune starts with a truly enchanting high register keyboard solo, and at 1:44 segues into a far more intense rhythm section, very upbeat. Eventually the original melody recurs atop that choppy rhythm. It wraps up with a drum solo, including some tuned drums.

If you like the start of Bob's Tune, Pastel will probably suit your tastes too.

Do You Mind is a minor key gem, starting off with quiet questions and ending with very energetic and even forceful answers.

On my phone, in addition to Forte: everything except Sprites, In Time, Spiral March and Apres-MIDI. That's 9 out of 13 I carry around with me.

This CD and the Coco CD Reaching Beyond were pretty much the last of Kit's output that centered on prog rock. You can hear some of his later interests developing here, certain mechanical aharmonic tactics and even some ambient material. Ambient later became a big theme for Kit Watkins.

Full disclosure: I shot a lot of concert photos for the reunited HTM and for its successor, Oblivion Sun. You can seem some of those on their web sites.

It used to be that you could download this CD in MP3 format from Kit's site. As of the week I write this (Dec 22, 2015), the free downloads seem to be disabled.

This Kit Watkins (everything else) and Coco Roussel (mainly drums and percussions) album is great. One of the best in Kit Watkins huge discography. But many are. They both played in the "Happy The Man" (HTM) band. (Kit Watkins was one of the original members and is in the lineup of the first 3 albums of the HTM group, while Coco Roussel, only appears on "Happy The Man 3rd - Better Late...", I think) (also recommended) There are really great songs on this album. They are all instrumentals. No guitars. The ones I prefer/recommend are these (all instrumentals, in minor mode, my preferred mode): - 7/8 Segue : A 7 rapid beats piece (thus the name). Very short (under 2 minutes) - Forte : it reminds me of a song of HTM "Labyrinth" , because it starts with the same chords, but then goes into something different. (This song, Labyrinth, is on HTM "3rd Better Late", composed by Watkins, and also appears on another solo album of Kit, "Labyrinth", on which Coco Roussel is also playing drums and percussion.). Kit Watkins' music, in general, is labyrinthic, a little bit hypnotic too, and very versatile at the same time. A beautiful song. - Do You Mind? : A 5 beat piece. Very nice. Perhaps my favorite on the album, and 7:16 long. - In Time : The song that gives the album its name. - Over The Andes : A very punchy song that ends with Kit showing his great keyboard soloing abilities. - Spiral March : One of the strangest song or this album. - Après-MIDI : (with MIDI in capital letter... is it an allusion to the MIDI standard that helped replacing recorders with sequencers, at least for keyboard players? Maybe). My favorite on the album with "Do you mind ?". it has some similarities with a Genesis song, but is quite different as well. Very quiet and moving, and with a happy ending (major mode). - Bob's Tune : a very quiet song which makes me thing of Eric Satie... and then evolves into something completely different, (with drums appearing, and keyboards much jazzier and more rhythmic. It ends with drums only.

With Kit's music, in the early albums at least, and this one is to be categorized as such, there is more punch than in the latest, that are more ambient, I would say.

There are also interesting harmonies, and evolving things on basic patterns. So, both surprises and something we can stick to.

The reason I give this album 5 stars is that with 8 songs I really love, the overall quality is very high. And the 5 other songs are nice too. Approx. 55 min in total.