EARTH ROT

The man's third album certainly took a different road and is some ways is quite a twist to his previous works. Indeed, while Innocence gave us an often exciting fusion of jazz, rock and classical, and experience gave us a cheesy and watered-down version of the debut album, Earth Rot is a very different animal. A conceptual piece based on the sore state of the planet (a subject that Spirit had developed before him), made from two-sidelong suites. From Axelrod's usual suspects (Palmer, Kaye and Roberts), only the drummer is present and to a lesser extent, KB man Randl, but are swarmed in a numerous flock of wind players and choir singers. Indeed, THAT is the big novelty of Earth Rot; and believe me, it is surprising. Not in their presence per se, but in the daring (but only moderately successful) choir arrangements. Personally, it's definitely not my cup of tea, and I even sometimes consider it a flaw, when I listen to the sometimes brilliant music behind them.

And it shouldn't come as a surprise to you, if I tell you that the better tracks are the instrumental ones - though it's rather hard to know when the different movements stop and start. The instrumental interludes between choir parts in the Warning III (but read TW4) are particularly excellent, and so are the calmer ones of its follow-up. Where the album misses the mark, is that the flipside's sidelong epic is the twin carbon copy of The Warning, which is too bad. Had I been Axelrod, I'd have gone for a fairly different sonic ambiance, but I guess the gloomy concept didn't allow it in his eyes and ears. So it's just too much of the same, but then again, we can say the same thing of Experience, and to a lesser extent about Innocence.

So, while Rot is certainly better than the cheesier Experience, it doesn't match Innocence's exciting and enthusiast fusion. For the proghead, this conceptual piece (based on some Old testament texts) and its fairly gloomy gatefold artwork might be where they'd be tempted to start exploring Axelrod's works, and it's definitely not the worse place to open investigations, but let's face it, this was his third album in 18 months, and that was maybe over-stretching it a little? So better skip the middle piece.