FIELD OF VISION

I looked for this album for a long time. Not that I was expecting much from it. According to band members, it was never intended to be released on CD and it was supposed to be only a cassette recording to sell at their pub gigs!! (remember, it was 1994) I bet a reviewer here who bashed Field Of Vision unmercifully didn´t know that. Anyway, I had all this upfront knowledge when I got the CD and I was ready to meet a badly recorded, done by a yet-not-mature band. But, in some ways, I was surprised by the good quality of it.

Ok, originality was something far from being achieved here. Credo was still one of several new bands trying to emulate their recently deceased heroes of Marillion (well, at least that´s the way I thought Marillion was after Fish has left them): for exemple, the beginning of the second track, Good Boy, sounded strikingly familiar, too much like a mix of Market Square Heroes and Garden Party riffing, although the song itself is quite good. And the songwriting of this CD is probably the one aspect that surprised me the most, with songs being very well cut and performed. It is clear that the band had a lot to learn yet, but the all basic elements were there already. Unlike other reviews here, I think the tunes are very promising, with at least a couple of gems: Sweet Scarlet Whisper and A Kindness. Both are excellent songs, very well arranged and passionate delivered.

The performances and the overall sound are superior than I had expected considering the band´s meager resources at the time. Singer Mark Colton has a nice voice that works very well with the style while bassist Jim Murdoch was already a fine player. Guitarrist Tim Burrel also showed great skill, even if he was still suffering a kind of "Steve Rothery syndrome" on several cuts. Actually the only department that the band was lacking a better player was at the keyboards. Not that Mik Stovold was bad, no, but it is clear the band needed a more accomplished and agressive player for this function (eventually they would, when the excellent Mike Varty arrived a little later). The production and mixing are adequate for the time.

Conclusion: while not nearly as good as their latter work, Field Of Vision clearly portrays a promising band in the right way. Although few songs here are really outstanding, none is crap. I´m glad Credo went on to release such excellent records as Rhetoric and Against Reason. This one may be seen as a blueprint of those. The real rating should be 2.5 but I decided to round up to 3 to compensate the unfairness of some of the earlier reviews.