THE TRANSATLANTIC DEMOS

I dont like giving 5 stars out sparingly, but this Neal Morse album is wonderful and shows just exactly what he brought to the progressive "supergroup", Transatlantic!. These emotional songs are in their first incarnations on this disc and some contain original lyrics. Any Neal or Transatlantic fan deserves to hear this. I personally love this kind of release, hearing how music gets made. The sound quality isn't stellar but is better than 95% of unofficial / "bootleg" demos sound quality. We are not normally treated to hearing such prog epics in demo form either, Yes made that different with their Rhino releases, but at a price (you had to buy them all to get a cd or twos worth of music from simply "studio-run throughs". But this is Neal we're talking about, and this release is worth a buy.

I never understood the reason behind this release. Unlike the The Roine Stolt Mixes of SMPTe, that I assume improved on the original release, The Transatlantic Demos is a compilation release that has no use to anyone except for the hardcore fans of Neal Morse and Transatlantic.

It was nice to hear the demos but I'm pretty sure that I will never listen to them again. I didn't realized that Neal Morse has already pre-written 70% of all the material before the rest of the super-group joined him during the recording sessions of SMPTe and Bridge Across Forever. This fact actually takes away some of the praise that Transatlantic have received for brilliantly composing some of the best melodic and jam sessions on their albums. Personally I found the bonus tracks on the Bridge Across Forever Limited Edition and The Whirlwind to be far more superior and most importantly just plain fun!

In other words this recording is strictly for completionists of Transatlantic and Neal Morse. The demo versions here are nice but adds nothing new of interest to the compositions that were released on the two Transatlantic studio albums.

*** star songs: Hanging In The Balance (18:01) We All Need Some Light (5:23) Dance With The Devil (9:01) Bridge Across Forever (4:48) Full Moon Rising (22:34)

** star songs: Working On Mystery Train (On A Bus) (1:46) Working On Piano Solo In 'All Of The Above' (0:53)

Total rating: 2,96