MAGRATHEA

Listening to their swansong album I notice that Magrathea sound more elaborate and less derivative than on their previous albums. I am very pleased with the tasteful keyboard colouring, the wonderful flowing electric guitar work and the dynamic interplay between the two musicians. My highlights.

It's About That Time!: compelling eruptions with bombastic keyboards and Moog Taurus bass pedal sound.

Passion Play: fat synthesizer flights and exciting and powerful interplay between organ and runs.

Magician: strong accellaration with synthesizer solo and wonderful guitarwork with use of volume pedal.

Heaven Is Never Enough: Prog Heaven with bombastic keyboards like a choir-Mellotron sound, fiery electric guitar, bass pedals and slow synthesizer solo.

And the excellent 'magnum opus' Interactive Dreamers (13 minutes) that showcases Magrathea at their best: powerful electric guitar play, spectacular synthesizer flights, compelling bombastic outbursts (with choir-Mellotron sound) and lots of strong shifting moods and interesting breaks, how exciting!

This is very pleasant, melodic and accessible music that scouts the borders between symphonic rock (in the vein of 76- 77 Genesis) and neo-prog (early Marillion/IQ/Pendragon).

My rating: 3,5 star.

This first release finds Magrathea delivering a rather raw, unrefined but still attractive sound, evoking the heavier Neo/Symphonic prog bands like TSUNAMI, MENTAUR and early GALAHAD or PALLAS.With Alexander performing in a quite dramatic vocal style and offering a keyboard work full of surprises, the album gets some of its inspiration also from Classic Prog bands such as YES and GENESIS, wrapped in an atmospheric mix of different and sometimes dark-styled soundscapes with symphonic keyboards, heavy-sounding guitars and a fair amount of breaks.Powerful and dynamic grooves give their place to keyboard-based symphonic passages and some nice dramatic vocal performances are followed by delicate instrumental parts with flashy synths and complex ideas.There is also an obscure metal mood dominating the album, which however does not sound metal at all, mainly because of the frenetic groovy parts and the combination of heavy guitars and nervous synths.But the overall style is closer to Neo/Symponic Prog with good orchestrations and interesting themes popping up here and there.Only flaws: The distorted vocal parts and a few uninteresting parts of groovy but forgettable Heavy Rock.

Of great interest for both fans of Neo Prog and Symphonic Rock, though even the metalheads will find plenty to like in ''Entropy''.Recommended.

Two people: Glen Alexander, who plays keyboards, drums and percussion and sings, and Gary Gordon, who plays guitars and bass.

With this third album is more melodic sound to it compared to the previous two.

Magical Box and his guitars, with a runoff found serenity of the fund. Galadriel is a wonderful piece. A voice from the '70s surrounded by symphonic sounds that we are still dreaming of better times. Reminds me a little brainwashed 'the music of the previous album, Entropy. And Bird of Fire travels on the ELO sound that recall the early '80s.

The finish is with Dreamscape. A final album worthy of a big-time. Start with the guitar music theory, Glen Alexander begins to sing, after two minutes you can almost hear the guitar of Steve Hachette, which promises to Supper's ready, but not him, but you think he is. An island of guitars and percussion and keyboards and singing and counterpoint ... then, then you go back to dreaming. Yes, friends, this is an album you need to get.

Some pieces that were not included in this record, can be found in Legends Remain, also published in 2004. It's worth it.

According to that, the music on In Search Of The Crystal is far less appealing and charming than on Legends. You can also pick up some other influences here and there, like the ELP-like timbre of the Hammond organ on Passion Play and the strong resemblance of Yes in the chorus and keyboards arrangement of the opener Search For The Crystal. But while they are still trying to find their own sound, the Genesis shadow is still all over it. Not that is bad, but it seems that making their music more complex for its own sake is not really doing any good to the final cut. In fact, it was bad for Citizen Cain and it is bad for Magrathea as well.

The best moments are still when they sound like Genesis on tracks like Heaven Is Not Enough and the beautiful Interactive Dreamers (best song on the entire CD). Again this is not terrific original, but it is good anyway. I still think the music here has enough good moments to warrant a 3 star rating, but barely. 2,5 would be a more fitting, but I´m in a good mood. The potential is still there. I really hope those guys will achieve a good balance between melody and originality

The production is here is a little superior of that on Legends (at least is superior than the copy I own). In fact I ended up liking this EP even more than the original Legends CD. The songwriting is also better, the guitars are more up front and the overall sound is more focused. This english duo worked very well! 3,5 stars for this one.

The songwriting is fine, with some very beautiful moments on songs like Galadriel, Fear Of the Unknown and Dreamscape. But also there are some tracks on which they try to simulate some of Genesis more Whimsical side and that really does not work. Production and mixing is another problem too, since they could be a lot better. A little more attention to the guitars and drums parts would have improved their sound a lot.

If you like classic Genesis, this is sure for you. I´m looking forward to hear Magrathea´s lastest and earlier works. Quite promising stuff. 3 stars.