FAREWELL

The first track, Farewell, is the only track, with a run time of 43min. This makes it a bit difficult to talk about any particular section without dropping a time-stamp. I tried a few times to describe section by section, but I soon became confused of which sections I was even talking about.

It starts off with a violin solo which sets a nice atmosphere and overarching melody that is revisited many more times throughout the album in different styles. The musicianship is top-notch throughout the album, particularly the rhythm section, which includes the keys at some points, along with some excellent syncopated drumming sections. Between these sections which maintain the atmosphere and melodies introduced at the start of the album there are many eclectic sections, including a funk section which is fantastic, a Pink Floyd-esque minimal bit, sax sections with a jazz fusion vibe, and some heavier rhythm guitar sections which I feel are the weakest parts of the album. I'd like to particularly make mention of the great key solo and drum section at 10:50 that has a nice Marillion feel to it, the outro instrumental with the saxophone which is fantastic, and all around the drumming by Robert Eisfeldt.

Prehaps my biggest gripe with the album is the fact that it is a single track. This is the extreme opposite of the problem that I had with Ayreon's Theory of Everything release. The Theory of Everything basically felt like one long track, but it was criminally cut up into pieces so that every track on the album was best listened to immediately following the previous track as well as listening to the next track. With Farewell, we do have a piece of music that keeps it's atmosphere, melodies, and rhythms throughout its entirety which justifies it as a single track, but do to this it hinders my ability to listen to it. When I pop in the CD for a quick car ride, I only get to hear the beginning bit and because of this, I've probably listen to the first 20min twice as much as the ladder half of the album. There are plenty of parts where the album could have been cut into sections.

Overall this is a great piece of music but it is not without its weaker moments which become exacerbated due to it being a single track. 4/5 stars.

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