AERIE FAERIE NONSENSE

Aerie Faerie Nonsense is The Enid's second album. With the genius of Robert John Godfrey's Classical and Symphonic touches, The Enid paved a new path for themselves by blending late (Wagner, Mahler, Sibelius, Elgar, Grieg, Beethoven) from Late Romantic Music Era into their symphonic arrangements. However, an important note, if you're not a fan of classical music (especially the romantic Mahler kind of era), then you're not going to enjoy this album.

Aerie Faerie Nonsense is a concept album, first side of the album is based on Robert Browning's Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came poem. The second side of the album is based on the Irish mythology of Fand. Fand is the queen of fairies, and the album art is based on her image. Tristan and Isolde and Myth of Parsival also make their way into the narrative of the album sparingly.

Let's start the review, shall we? The album opens with a brief prelude that sets the stage for a beautiful romance piece with mellow musical tone arrangements, and it ends with little vibraphone touches, It is a great prelude for the next track.

The next track is called "Mayday Galliard" which starts the tale of Roland. This track is kind of whimsy, I love Stephen Stewart's guitar work on "Mayday Galliard," a lovely piece of gentle Symphonic Prog.

The third track "Ondine" is a short dreamy song that features flute (keyboard simulated) backed acoustic guitar melodies, soft piano melodies, light keyboard parts. These soft harmonic melodies do give this piece a medieval touch, and piano melodies remind me of Beethoven. Guitarist Francis Lickerish does a great job here playing melodic guitar in this little song.

"Childe Roland" the fourth track of the album reveals The Enid's playful side in the middle of their voyage. When you combine very alive and kicking percussions and melancholic classical movements with ferocious (definitely not the right word) guitar sections and brilliant keyboard arrangements this happens! This tune symbolizes, in other words, embodies Symphonic Progressive music at its utmost best.

In the name of Classical Progressive music, who wouldn't love the soaring crescendos of the wonderfully orchestral "Fand" the sixteen-minute epic. Divided into two movements, the first movement musically portrays the meeting of Lady Fand and her love Cuchulainn, the second movement depicts the separation of them. These movements by The Enid, are based on the "Irish myth of Fand" originally but musically based on "The Garden of Fand", a symphonic tone poem composed by Sir Arnold Bax. In "The Garden of Fand", Lady Fand and her boyfriend Cuchulainn are introduced. Cuchulainn is seduced away by Lady Fand from her home and duty. As soon as Emer (the wife of Cuchulainn) becomes envious of the pair, she assaults them. Cuchulainn and Emer's affair upsets Lady Fand so much that she decides to leave Cuchulainn forever as she's worthy of Cuchulainn as his wife. Musically, this piece is the flagship of the album that brings such emotion and romance which is hard to resist, and in my opinion, it is one of the best compositions ever by The Enid. "Fand" does have The Enid's defining signature guitar melodies, and it has some sinister moments which alternates into engaging moments or vice versa which requires the attention of the listeners. This orchestral shouldn't sound boring to the listeners of late romantic classical composers, such as Mahler. This piece is classical music obviously, just done with rock instruments.

Aerie Faerie Nonsense, in my opinion, still belongs to the progressive music genre, however with very significant classical influences, from Mayday Galliard to the Fand. From a technical standpoint, the last two songs of the album "Fand 1 & 2" may either require a sound amplifier or pre-amp if your headphones are not loud as these two songs are low on volume, and they were not mastered very well for bassy headphones, as the band had been low on budget. Irrespective of the audio quality, this album is still a masterpiece of symphonic prog so it gets 5/5 from me.

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