MERIDIAN

In the mid-Eighties Japanese progrock band Gerard released two excellent albums entitled Gerard and Empty Lie, Empty Dream, in those days they were a four piece band featuring Toshio Egawa as the Japanese answer to Emerson, Wakeman and Jobson and guitarplayer Yukihiro Fujimura who later left Gerard to found Vienna. On this CD the to a trio reduced Gerard plays seven tracks from these two albums in re-arranged versions. The focus is on Toshio Egawa with his ultra-bombastic style and amazing sounds from his Korg synthesizers with frequent, very sensational use of the pitchbend button. He often sounds like a guitar or violin, very similar to the sound of Eddie Jobson, great! Toshio also loves the play on the Hammond organ, he uses a digital Hammond with a Leslie box delivering lots of spectacular runs. At some moments I miss the tension between the electric guitar and keyboards as on the original tracks but Toshio plays so exciting and so the the super-dynamic rhythm-section does, like a high-adrenalin Neil Peart and Geddy Lee! If you love 'over the top keyboard driven prog', this one is yours!