HEAVEN TASTE

This collection is an interesting set of 5 b-sides from No-Man recorded between the years 91-93. There are 4 regular sized tracks and 1 very long mostly instrumental track over 20 minutes long. It is the size of a regular album, but it is a collection of rare but previously recorded tracks.

The first 4 shorter songs are all excellent, emotional, moving, lyrical and even rhythmical. The big standouts here are "Long Day Fall" which features some great violin from former member Ben Coleman, and "Road" which is their cover of the song by Nick Drake. The song "Babyship Blue" was a previous b-side that was only instrumental, and the nice surprise on this collection is that this time around there are lyrics that appear halfway through the song.

The title song of this collection is the long track. It is a dance oriented ambient track that continues on for over 20 minutes. It is nice, but it's nothing special really. It's a floating piece with a mostly constant rhythm that changes a few times, sort of similar to early Porcupine Tree long jams, but leaning towards being more ambient, but not as ambient as Bass Communion as the sound is not really minimalistic, it's dance-ambient.

This is a pretty good collection for No-Man fans, but just know that yes you get great vocals by Tim Bowness and some of that ambience from the last track is courtesy of Richard Barbieri. Of course, Steven Wilson's influence is there and obvious. Not a bad collection, just not their best collection.