FROM SOURCE TO SEA

no, wait, another nice solo...

Nothing changes in the happy land of GANDALF. The Good is always wins and the fairies seem to listen to Mike Oldfield. Soundscapes of strings and guitars, waves of gentle sounds and ENIGMA-like feeling without irritating electronic drums (no, wait, Heinz thrown them in some trakcs...an Evil Deed!). As almost every one-man-band, GANDALF is too obsessed with its own world and he refuses to see the surroundings.3 stars again - this time for few simply beautiful tracks (mainly in the beginning).And to put away the snobbery - the Music is really beautiful though it's also repetitive and neither original nor progressive.

After the vocal The Shining and the electronic The Universal Play, Gandalf took a step back towards home with From Source To Sea. It is by no means a full return to the sound that he developed on his first four albums, but at least what we get here is something a bit more interesting then the previous album and the electric guitar reasserts itself again (though only occasionally). This is a mostly relaxing and atmospheric album, but it wouldn't be entirely fair to call it New-Age. Mike Oldfield is once again a reasonable comparison, but also Vangelis' China in that it has a somewhat "oriental" feel at times. From Source To Sea is a lot more symphonic and sweeping than previous Gandalf albums, but it never ventures anywhere near Symphonic Prog. Ultimately it is too subdued and uneventful to be anything to write home about, even though it works well enough as background music.

The title track was previously familiar to me from the excellent live album Gallery Of Dreams Live (part 1) (featuring Steve Hackett), though the live version is rather different from this studio version, and (like virtually all the tracks on that live album and its companion second part) the live version is vastly superiour.