COUNTRY AIRS - PIANO SOLOS

Rick Wakeman

Symphonic Prog

3.23 | 47 ratings

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octopus-4
Special Collaborator
RIO/Avant/Zeuhl,Neo & Post/Math Teams

I have the 10 tracks edition, the one without "New Age" clearly written on, probably because once you start listening to this album what it's about is clear enough.

10 piano solo tracks on which the Wakeman's style is unmistakeable. Listen to track three, Ducks and Drakes" as example. You can't think to any other keyboardist.

New age I was saying...yes. I think it's the first fully newage oriented album by Wakeman, but I don't have "The Family Album" and some of the soundtracks released between the poor "Zodiaque" and this one,so I can be wrong. When I have bought it I was quite into newage. The instrumental soundscapes were able to give me the sensations I was missing in the 80s, when "prog" was brought on by few neo bands like Marillion and some dynosaurus like Waters and Yes (don't want to mention Genesis of that period).

Well, this album has a newage flavor mainly because is all piano instrumental highly influenced by classical composers, I think to Chopin but it's just the first name that coms in mind. This newage flavor is mitigated by Rick's skill and technique. As I have written, it's clearly Rick Wakeman's playing. It has no Jon Anderson singing, no Squire or Howe, no Bruford at drums, only piano but you can imagine how those tracks can sound with a prog arrangement.

It's a highly enjoyable album, you have to stay in the right situation and one can argue that it's not properly a prog album.

Well, I think it is prog, instead, as well as Emerson's Piano Concerto N.1 is.

3 good stars.

octopus-4 | 3/5 | 2013-10-4

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