UNFOLD THE FUTURE

TFK is a rather prolific band. If you except 1999, they have released at least one (single, double + live albums) work every year. Even in case of a single album, TFK will always manage to fill the CD at full capacity; offering to devoted fans the maximum amount of music but overwhelming the others with lenghtly and sometimes boring stuff.

The best example was their last studio effort "The Rainmaker". As such it was a good album (for a "neutral" fan as I am), but the double (and limited) CD edition was a complete waste.

With "Unfold The Future", TFK repeats the same mistakes. They could have provided us with a great album if only they had decided to produced a standard CD one (even extended to sixty minutes).

This album holds one of my favourite track ever from the band. Their longest one (because I have never considered their suite "Garden Of Dreams" as one track. It is a collection of lots of small parts with little links between each other). IMO, "The Truth Will Set You Free" is brilliant. This masterpiece of prog is of course the central number of this release and it would have been rather intelligent to create an album around this great song and limit its lenght to a one CD version only.

Even if it is completey in the "Yes" style, one has indeed to recognize that the last great number of this fabulous band (Yes, of course) dates from 1977 ("Awaken"). So, there is no damage as far as I am concerned to recreate this atmosphere of YesEpics. I just love it. It is a five star track.

As long as being very much "Yes" oriented, TFK won't forget his other major source of inspiration : Crimson of course. But not the best of it.

When one listens to "Christianopel", "Soul Vortex" and "The Devil's Danceschool" their jazzy and fully jam-oriented mood only leaves me one word fto describe them : boooooring. The same feeling applies to "Monkey Business", "Black and White" (a song with no head nor tail and leading nowhere), "The Navigator" (a dull and childish pastoral song). They do not deserve no more than one star.

In the two stars range, I would rank "Grand Old World". The song starts promisingly but ends up in an improv style which is far too much sax oriented to my taste.

Something special takes place at times with "Rollin' The dice". Although the general atmosphere is generally jazz-oriented, the vocal parts will sound as if Bowie was in charge (not during the whole number, only during the best passages - three short ones). Rather strange, unexpected and probably not intended.

"Man Overboard" is not too bad but cannot really break the two stars level. The bonus track "Too Late for Tomatos" and its Santana mood (guitar + percussion) is also a nice moment of this rather lenghtly effort. It starts brilliantly but the middle jazzy section is really too much for me. The final part is completely improv and chaos. What a pity that this track does not clock at four minutes only !

Some good numbers as well sit on this album (three stars) :

"Silent Inferno" starts very weak with a long and dull instrumental part, but as soon as the vocals pick up, it turned as a traditional TFK song : nice vocal melody, great guitar breaks and complex bass and drumming. After all, a good and classic TFK song. A bit too much jazzy towards the end to my ears, but this jazz mood will be felt throughout the whole album.

"Vox Humana" is a pleasant and subtle song. The "Truth" theme comes back in this song and its melody is very pleasant.

I was quite hesitant for "Genie In A Bottle" but we have most of the recipe of a usual TFK song again. The overall mood is again jazzier, but some nice vocal and guitar parts will raise the level of this song (start and finish somewhat remininscent of "Watcher"...). "Fast Lane" also belongs here for almost the same reason (except that there is no trace of Genesis here. We remain fully in the "Yes" orientation, but again with a jazzy touch).

I like the short "Solitary Shell". Full of emotion and melody. A nice little piece of music.

This work holds really the best and the worse of TFK. This effort is the most jazzy TFK one so far as well. It is due to the addition of two guest musicians of which one holds the sax and another one the percussion.

The second epic song of the album "Devil's Playground" contains as well all the contradictions of TFK : brilliant at times and boring at others. One thing is for sure : this track should never have lasted for over twenty-five minutes. A ten minutes version would have perfectly been sufficient, but again the TFK taste to prolonged uselessly the experience is quite prejudicial. The second part of the song (if you except the short passage with "The Truth" theme) is rather difficult to get into. Loose, hectic, direction- less (except the very end of the song which is pure symphony).

As a single album, I could have rated it with everything between one and four stars depending on the track listing. As such (double CD), three stars is really the max I can rate this album. But this is entirely due to "The Truth Will Set You Free".

I honestly believe that TFK makes major mistakes in releasing exaggeratedly long albums. Maybe they should stik to a single album and eventually release "Limited Editions" with a second "bonus" CD.