SNOWBALL

Line-up / Musicians: - Roye Albrighton (Nektar) / vocals, guitar - Curt Cress (Passport) / drums & percussion - Dave King (Embryo) / bass, synthesizer - Kristian Schultze (Passport) / keyboards

1. "Hold On" (3:19) nothing special here except for the brief bridges between the vocal sections (which take up 90% of the song). Not a very catchy melody or engaging song. (8.66667/10)

2. "Tender Storm" (4:08) instrumental with a nice groove and excellent percussion and synth play. (I hear no guitar!) (9/10)

3. "Devils Demons" (5:18) not loving the modern drumming effects, but I do respect and enjoy Kristian Schultze's keyboard play as well as Dave King's creative bass note choices. Roye's guitar and voice mirror Kristian's lead melody and it actually works. The chorus is a little questionable: like a jazzed up for the musical stage version of Nektar Recycled material. This reminds me a lot of the tangential jazz-rock fusion NOVA was making in London. (8.75/10)

4. "Country Dawn" (5:55) drumming rudiments with beginner's bass line and synth-dominated keyboard play opens this one before everybody shifts and settles into a Florida-cabana band motif for Roye to deliver a rathe rdull and ordinary (uninspired) guitar solo. Are these guys trying to make Yacht Rock? (8.75/10)

5. "Backfire" (3:06) using a rudimentary form of the bass line to The Ohio Players' "Fire" and some dynamic guitar and vocal lines, the song falls quite flat on its face. (8.5/10)

6. "Lilli Henri" (4:28) a decent Jazz-Rock Fusion theme that could have come from an album by Earth, Wind & Fire, Toto, Bob James, or even Narada Michael Walden, the band choose to let the instruments do the talking this time: especially in the voices of Kristian Schultze's keyboards. Despite the fact that it was more Roye Albrighton's rhythm guitar work that wowed me with Nektar, he is pretty lame here. (8.875/10)

7. "Paradise" (5:46) Roye's voice just doesn't suit the jazzy, funky realms of the fusion world so well as that of his and Alan "Taff" Freeman's rich prog soundscapes in Nektar though it does get a little better the thicker the sonosphere gets (like in the fifth minute). Is it only me, but does Dave King's bass play seem way too simplistic? (No wonder I've never formed any attachment to or affinity for his former band, Embryo.) (8.6667/10)

8. "Defroster" (4:51) here going for the power rock kind of Jazz-Rock Fusion--in my opinion the lamest form of J-R F and one that only compositionally-challenged artists and under-skilled musicians could go for. At least it's instrumental. Curt and Kristian are actually pretty decent here but Dave and Roye are pretty much useless (this despite a substantial amount of time and space given to Dave for a solo in the fifth minute). Roye's solo is so poor that he's backed by Kristian's Moog and even requires a second guitar track! (8.66667/10)

9. "Shade" (3:04) nice piano play opens this one before joined by synth strings and bass. An actually decent finale! (8.875/10)

Total Time 39:55

I guess I was expecting/hoping for more jazz-rock fusion of the nature that Kristian Schulze and Curt Cress had played over the previous eight years as part of Klaus Doldinger's PASSPORT. To hear Roye Albrighton's vocals be central to so much on this album is quite a shocker (and, I have to admit, a let down--and this while still loving Roye as a singer! I just wanted more J-R Fusion). When the music is jazzy, it is of a laid back Third Wave-Bordering-on-Fourth Wave type, yet the musicianship still of a high quality.

C/three stars; a nice record for posterity's sake--to commemorate the collaboration attempted by these lieutenants of 1970s prog and Jazz-Rock Fusion, but, ultimately, this is a failure with nothing much of substance or innovation to contribute to the music worlds. And: what a horrible name for a band--especially for one that wants to be taken serioiusly!

Cold Heat is the last album from the Snowball supergroup formed by several wonderful musicians from other bands, like Embryo, Passport, and Nektar. They showed wonderful promise on their first effort, Defroster in '77, although not exactly as prolific as the albums from the bands the members originated from it was not that bad. Now 1977 was already approaching the fringe for the 80's invasion, so that band was to either take the neo-prog revitalization path, or fall, like so many others, down the rabbit hole of the upcoming decade's pop music.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and Snowball took the path that would come to be so utterly beaten that it would become an annoyance. Their second album, Cold Heat, was released in 1979, the dawn of a new era. This time the band really makes themselves seem like a bunch of oxymorons.

Cold Heat turns out to be a balancing act of occasional jazz bursts and cheesy disco-funk that more often than lot swings to the latter. Vocalist Eddie Taylor embodies the archetypal swagger that would become more and more popular as the 80's progressed, almost like a Maurice White without the lovable factor. The few moments where the band breaks into anything remotely jazz-like it's immediately swept away with a sonic cheese onslaught, making for music nothing short of a dishonest. Schultz and Gebauer occasionally throw in echoing buzzes and other effects that does nothing to help the mood. I actually commend Taylor on sax; he's not bad- but he isn't made for jazz. His latin- infused dance style aged extremely poorly and I would go so far as to say that if he was placed in any other kind of musical environment he wouldn't flourish nearly as easily.

So as a verdict: I suggest you either take a look at Snowball's debut or the bands these obviously talented musicians came from. You'll definitely get a bigger bang for your buck.

Not as jazz based as Passport, and not as hard rocking as Nektar could be, Snowball create a very accessible sound with no one influence predominating the music. There is a rock element, a funk one at times, and some jazzier moments making for a very likable music. There are four tracks with vocals, all done by Albrighton in a very nice way, Hold On, which is sort of philosophical, Devil's Demons, taunting the listener with "Devil's Demons, never reason", Backfire, about a night of whiskey, and being "laid out on the table", and Paradise, about a bird.

The other cuts are instrumental, Tender Storm, Country Dawn, Lilli Henry, Defroster, and Shade, full of some very tasteful playing by the band, not super frenetic fusion, really, but more laid back, almost atmospheric in places. Shade, the album's closing number, features Kristian Schultze's keys to the fore in some wonderful playing, a nice way to end things.

Alas, the things that contributed to Defroster being such a great record were to fall apart by next year's album "Cold Heat", with Albrighton and King leaving, and the sound of Snowball becoming more conventional, and much less appealing. Despite it's obscure status in general, Defroster is an album that has stood the test of time for me, and i continue to get quite a bit out of listening to it every time i do. Four stars.