IN THE MIDDLE, ON THE EDGE

For several years now I have been chasing the successor of this debet, Tricks of Time, because I'm 99% sure it's a terrific album. And that's because I love the stream track Jurassic Spark for all those years now and I've heard it's not even the best track of the album. But I still haven't managed to find it but I did run into this one and I'm pretty sure it has to be great as well. I also know their fantastic contribution on the Kalevela project (Stormen) and that song is almost as good as Jurassic Spark so I'm beginning to believe you can't go wrong with these Swedish masters of symphonic prog.

This album starts with a very entertaining instrumental called The Trees and the Chopping Nutcracker. I've been doing a birds study many years ago so I happen to know a nutcracker is a very interesting bird that's only breeding in Scandinavia and a few other countries in Europe. It's related to crows and is only rarely seen in my country so that's why the bird is special to me. Anyway, it's obviously interesting enough for Grand Stand to write a song about. Maybe these guys are nature lovers as well, that would be a plus to me for sure. The song is good enough for a four star rating for me mainly thanks to great keys.

Actually next song is also about a bird and that species is even much more special because it's the super rare and impressive condor from America. The song is called Condor and the Java Cup to be precise and it's another instrumental in roughly the same style with dominant (and excellent) keys. These first two songs are really how I had imagined them, very high quality in both composing as well as execution. 4*.

Third track (The first steps of another Day) is more wind dominated so that's nice for a change. Must be wind imitation on the synthisizer because I read nothing about wind instrument playing in the line up. The sound reminds me somewhat of a song by Galleon, a bit fairytale like but not too cheesy, simply beautiful. 3,75*.

Triumphant Forrest going Frenzy is going back to the keyboards, needless to say it's instrumental all the time because it appears there are no vocals at all on this album and that's a surprise to me because in the songs I already knew by Grand Stand there were both vocal contributions. Anyway, another very fine track and another 3,75* effort.

Minore Mischiefs in Big Ways is another very melodic effort, I have to admit that you will have to love the style if you want to love this album. If you are not into very melodic, laid back keyboard/synth music you'd better forget about this album. It's much of the same in that sense but I have no problem with it as I like this kind of music a lot. Another 4 stars for this lengthy tune.

Ok, I'd better stop the song by song reviewing before I start repeating myself. The other three tracks are of the same level and in the style as above mentioned and deserve ratings between 3,75 and 4 stars as well so that completes this album and I think I have said all there is to be said about it. This Grand Stand is a bit different from the real band it became later on. This is a two men effort and I think they did very well. Recommended for lovers of melodic keyboardplaying like I said. Good stuff. 4 stars.