SQUARING THE CIRCLE

Another year, another Soniq Theater album, and amazingly enough this is the eighteenth by keyboard player Alfred Mueller. I'm pretty sure I have heard all of them, along with the album he recorded with Rachel's Birthday, and for this one he has definitely taken a different tack. Often one would say that for the most part his playing is an amalgam of artists such as Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre and Rick Wakeman, but I was surprised at just how much like Wakeman the first few songs of this album come across as. By the end of the second track, "Circus Ponies On The Run", I was already thinking that this could well be his best album to date.

If he could just get hold of "proper" drummer instead of a machine then I am sure that some of these songs would be lifted to a whole new level. Although the complete album didn't quite manage to live up to the promise of the opening tracks, I do believe that this is his best album to date, quite a statement when one thinks how many he has released so far. Alfred has been working as a solo artist for many years now, but this release did make me wonder what it would be like if he could find some like-minded musicians to make this into a full band, now that would be something to hear. As it is, I really enjoyed the album, and it is available for "name your price" on his Bandcamp site so why not give him a try?