BRUFORD: FEELS GOOD TO ME

It's hard to make a bad album if you have Allan Holdsworth playing on it. Bill Bruford's compositions here are quite good from the technical point of view, but they are slightly immature, sometimes naively simple ("Seems Like a Lifetime Ago Part 1") other times extremely complicated ("Beelzebub"). which is okay of course because this is the first album that has his name on its cover and no one else's. Like I mentioned previously, there is a great range of music here, from complex fusion to simple jazz ballads, and this cannot appeal to everyone, as Bill is successful at making these polar opposites within the jazz genre sound authentic. He employs Annette Peacock to sing the ballads, and while she is a competent vocalist, it is a strange marriage to hear such a marriage of polary different but very strong personalities. If her voice stayed more in the background it could have worked, but she is way too present, and most prog listeners will probably be bewildered at her entrance in track 2. This album all in all is a whole bunch of cheese really, both the "jazz" parts and the "fusion" parts. Were "Beelzebub" and "Feels good to Me" written for video games of that day? They sure sound like it. This has nothing to do with the musicians involved here, it just shows a bit of naiveness coming from the young Bruford. It's quite a good album but he couldn't stand on his own as a solo artist yet. Check it out for Allan's solos, they are magnificent!