FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA

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I only knew the band couple of weeks ago when a friend of mine introduced me his collection of Big Big Train albums and demonstrated me with some songs which I forgot the title. The subgenre of crossover prog covers so wide kinds of music style and for the first introduction of BBT I could find the elements of neo-prog - which does make sense as the critical definition of crossover is the existence of pop elements in the music. When I started with this demo, on thing for sure I could find there was one thing in common: pop element dominates the composition of any song. And then, why bother listening to this music under prog category? Well, you would then find some prog elements attached to any song in the album by inserting breaks that demonstrate flavor of prog or throughout the vocal line the band augments with some symphonic touch at the background. For some reason, the first time I got listened to this demo album, I remembered the first time I spun the debut album of IQ 'Tales From The Lush Attic' which had raw recording quality, similar with this demo album. I could also find the heavy influence from It Bites.

And then I learned from the band official site and found that From the River is a document from the very earliest days of BIG BIG TRAIN. The band was formed by Andy Poole, Ian Cooper and Gregory Spawton in 1990. Greg's first band in the early 1980's was called EQUUS, which also featured Phil Hogg, the drummer on 'Bard'. Andy was in a band called ARCSHINE, a synth based project, with Ian Cooper. After leaving university, Greg moved to Bournemouth where he met Andy. They were both big IQ fans and started to work on some music. At the same time, ARCSHINE continued in a separate parallel existence. And I explored the music further track by track and it reconfirmed that there were good elements of the music that could be used as the basis from the band to move forward with their career. I found that the music has a relatively good melody and good harmonies but was quite lacking on vocal department. Composition-wise, actually this demo album offers the sounds of old prog through its synthesizer's symphonic style and the modern music with dominant pop element, demonstrated by its musical flow.

Overall, it's not a bad debut album and it satisfies those who like later development of prog music. This demo is worth for collectors / fans who later find their succeeding albums afterwards. The music is quite good and promising. The audio quality is poor.Keep on proggin' ...!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW