INDUSTRY STANDARD

As other albums of this band, "Industry Standard" offers similar music composition. In my opinion, DIXIE DREGS music is mostly straightforward in the vein of jazz-rock fusion. What makes their music unique is the balance combination of melodies played by multi instruments: violin, keyboard/piano and lead guitar.

"Assembly Line" is probably the best track in this album. It has a dynamic instrumentation since its intro where drums, bass and piano go in-line with the music in its harmony. The lead guitar fills the melody and followed by short drum solo in the middle. It's an energetic song. . "Chips Ahoy" is a typical jazz-rock fusion song. "Ridin' High" offers different sort of music that DIXIE DREGS typically creates. It has a guest appearance of Patrick Simmons who fills the vocal part. The music has a strong melody with nice piano and some guitar riffs. "Where's Dixie?" is opened by a nice violin as lead melody with a sort of country music as song's rhythm. As the music flows, the guitar fills accompanied by piano provide a nice harmony for this song."Vitamin Q" is a blues-based song with bass guitar sound as beat keeper. It has a stunning lead guitar.

Overall, this is a good album. It has good songwriting and musicianship. On musicianship, I praise highly on STEVE MORSE guitar style and MARK O'CONNOR's violin. One thing bothers me though, this album fails to create any musical orgasm or I would say it has no or little "soul" in its music. Everything flows smoothly, a bit boring to me. The music is so simple; it's like listening to country music plus electric guitar. Wonder why this is categorized as prog. What is prog, anyway? Or ... this might not be my cup of tea. It's ok for a change, sometime. That's how I feel. I leave it up to you to judge. Gatot Widayanto - Indonesia.