ANALOGY

Imagine someone battering a drum kit with a pair of baseball bats, with the most basic of timekeeping abilities and no understanding of what a fill is supposed to sound like. Your 4 year-old nephew, perhaps.

Got that?

OK, now add a bass player who only knows where the root notes are, a guitarist who only knows the standard set of chords, and a keyboard player happiest sticking with just the one chord.

Your 4 year-old nephew's friends, perhaps.

Now, add a female vocalist who fancies herself an opera singer, but can't really control the vibrato, only has a 4-note range, and has the habit of interjecting yeah! at funny moments. At least, I laughed.

Give her a tone a bit like Mariska Veres, with a worse handling of English words - but really make that vibrato bad, to stop it sounding so cute you can forgive it.

Now give the band a 2-chord jam to noodle along to, with insistent bash-bash rhythms, plenty of pentatonic blufferama and duff notes in the solos, and you end up with something like this.

No wonder it needed the band (without wishing to seem sexist, but specifically the female vocalist) to be naked on the cover.

Prog Rock?

Not on your nelly!

True, it comes together every now and again to sound a bit like those movies we never watch - you know, the ones with naked vampires in - but musically, it's as satisfying as a piece of damp toast.

Taken as a piece of musical comedy, there are moments galore - Indian Meditation being absolutely crammed with them, from the laughable drum entry, to the side-splitting vocals. Maybe that's a bit cruel - but some of the musicianship really is that poor - and it need not matter, if competent musicianship is not what you prize in music.

As lightweight entertainment, when taken as a roughly-hewn piece of psychedelia that might have clawed its way out of the ground in 1967, it's actually not bad - quite engaging from the point of view of waiting for the next faux-pas, and actually being pleasantly surprised by some of the beautiful sonic textures that pop out of the general naive muddling around.

When you put it into perspective, among the great Progressive Rock that was released in 1972, however, this does seem a bit of a joke.

Thick as a brick perhaps...?

I can't really call this album poor in itself, as it's a very enjoyable listen, in the right frame of mind, with only as few moments of real cringing. But no serious progger would actually want this in their collection - unless they were one of those people that just buys albums for the cover... and even then...

Share this ANALOGY review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to Certif1ed
• Report this review (#172034)
• Buy ANALOGY music online with PA partners
• Show all ANALOGY MP3/Stream
• Go to ANALOGY page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Analogy page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for ANALOGY related discussions