FOCUS OR BLINDERS

In 1991 the USA progrock sextet Ancient Vision released their debut album entitled The Vision, three years later followed by this second CD. The magic-realistic cover art is done by Dutch artist Mario Baert. I know him from my work for Dutch SI Magazine where he already made interesting black and white paintings on the cover and his work was even compiled on a progrock calender! The 13 songs (running time at about 70 minutes) sound pleasant and melodic with a head and tail. The music is quite simply structured but worked out tastefully: dreamy with saxophone in Dreams, beautiful acoustic guitar and a wonderful organ solo in Father And Son and a fluent rhythm with strong soli on guitar and keyboards in We Are Not Gentlemen and Mountains. The raw undertone in the vocals add an emotional dimension to the songs like in What Is Not Given and the titletrack. In general the musical approach is song-oriented but in the long composition Why Send A Man In To Do A Boy's Job delivers lots of soli, especially the keyboards sound omnipresent. My rating for this CD: 3,5 stars.