THE CONFESSIONS OF DR. DREAM AND OTHER STORIES

The Confessions is another worthy Ayers album, clearly better than the previous Bananamour, and it has some resemblance to Shooting At The Moon.

The first side is made up of relatively short tracks and some are plagued with soul/funked-up choirs so typical of what Kevin had gotten us used to so far. The suite Blessing/Awakened/Curse makes a wink and a nod to his Soft Machine track Why Are We Sleeping? That track is maybe the only one really worthy of noticed to the demanding proghead on this track selection.

Clearly the highlight of the album is the multi-part ( min) title track. As you might guess the opening section is extremely interesting and is a bit reminiscent of what Wyatt will do on his Rock Bottom album in guise of healing procedure following his accident. The third movement bears some similarities with the You circa-GonG. And the last part of the suite being the icing of the cake with its deliciously insane slow rhythms and extraterrestrial guitars. Probably Ayers's best track especially for progheads. The last short track is delightful and a fitting farewell to the album.

This album is second in my list of Ayers album behind Shooting At The Moon, but like most of the others, it is extremely uneven. I will stop my reviewing run of Ayers album around this album and the live June 1, 74 as the Ayers's solo albums will keep rolling in between his long holidays periods in Ibiza but will also become increasingly uneven and inconsistent (ending up as patchy by the end of the decade) which is a real shame knowing the man's talents but also knowing his aptitude at taking the easy side of life, too. For the proghead, most everything he had to say, had been said by 75 and the following albums are for pure Ayers fans.

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