COSMIC FURNACE

Roger Powell's credentials are impressive, arena Rock BIG.

Winged by the great Robert Moog, Powell is a synth designer, musician, sound engineer, magazine columnist, programmer for Arp synths and later programmer for Apple, Roger Powell has that perfect balance between talent and showmanship. This same attribute brought him to play alongside "stage monster bands" like UTOPIA and Richie Blackmore´s RAINBOW as Meat Loaf, David Bowie and other stadium acts. Enough with the resume.

This 1973 first solo release goes by the name of "Cosmic Furnace" consisting of 2, 20+- minutes tracks, subdivided in 3 sections each, unconnected, musically speaking, but concieved as a project album.

Composition wise it takes different routes, some with better results than others. It travels the pulse/electronic Berlin school like route, as it can go the funky Jazz "a la Jan Hammer" , other times it takes the "Latin" path, added also by some slow paced piano solo meditations and here and there touches of synth solos in the kind of arena Prog/Rock, of which he was one of the "keyboard player as frontman", "litetarally speaking", pioneers (behind Keith of course).

Now the sad news. More than once his musical songwriting relies too much, or solely, on its super synths' idiosincracies. He over saturates good musical ideas turning them into unattractive pastiches and at the same time making them sound totally predictable.

Disappointing in direct proportion with my expectations. But reality bites and music composition is all that really matters at the end of the day and this album in that regard is highly uneven.

What is great is solid great but what´s not is simply quiet boring. So dissecting this 6 song effort. I sadly report that it goes half and half , making it good but short of essential.

***3 PA stars.

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