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Renaissance - Time-Line CD (album) cover

TIME-LINE

Renaissance

 

Symphonic Prog

1.59 | 145 ratings

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Tom Ozric
Prog Reviewer
3 stars Righty-Oh !! The 80's weren't the best time for Progressive bands (duh) - but what I'm going to say is that this album is worth 2.7 stars with my perception because what I can still hear on this Pop oriented affair is an acceptable dose of complexity, especially regarding Jon Camp's admirable bass playing, certain arrangements of various tunes, and Annie Haslam's vocals maintaining a degree of 'Majik'. I'm just playing my LP now as it has been quite some time since I have given it an airing. Sure there are some clunkers like the bouncy 'Richard the IX', complete with lame wa-wa-waooo backing vocals. Spare me. Album opener, 'Flight', gets things off to a great start - Annie in fine form, music arranged with tricky time-sigs and a sort of 'big' and impressive vibe. It has to be noted that folks like Ian Mosley (Marillion) and Nick Magnus (Steve Hackett's band at the time) helped out here on drums and keyboards. Of course, fault shouldn't be directed at the quality of the playing, more so the nature of the songwriting, being commercially motivated and a far cry from the level of such epics as 'Mother Russia' or even 'Day of the Dreamer'. At least on the cover photo they looked 'cooler' than on the previous Camera-Camera release (Camp looking as if he dropped ten years off his age, Annie has ditched her 'Annie' pendant and donned a denim jacket, Michael Dunford almost sports a slight smirk.....). A song like 'Electric Avenue' starts out well with some incredible bass-licks but morphs into an uber-cool new-wave song. Things like 'The Entertainer', 'Distant Horizons' and 'Auto-Tech' do show some glints of the good old days. Overall, I may be more forgiving with this album than most, but ultimately it's not essential. I'll tick the 3 star box at the risk of receiving a stack of hate-mail........
Tom Ozric | 3/5 |

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