FLOATING

"Floating" continues in a similar style to the preceding "Inside", and for this reason these two albums are often compared against each other. For my part, I think that this album, although perfectuating and polishing some rougher edges of the previous one, actually did not surpass it. True, this album's epic track "The Light From Deep Darkness" is a way better than "Land of No Body", but overall there is not much progress here. The mentioned epic is a wonderful space-rock jam with again lots of Jon Lord-esque organ noodling, while another highlight - "Castle in the Air" - brings some Oriental-sounding psychedelic flourishes along with powerful guitar based pumping riffs reminiscent of what later followers of space rock genre like Ozric Tentacles would explore in a more techno-oriented setting of the 1990s. Apart from that, the remaining three songs are nothing special. They tend to repeat the themes from the earlier albums while the closer "Madhouse" once again (as was the case with "Future City" off "Inside") proofs that Bornemann can sing in a vocal style similar to Ian Anderson of JETHRO TULL, but this time around the result is not so interesting. For me "Floating" is on par with "Inside" in terms of instrumental prowess, and even surpassing it a bit in this aspect, but in terms of offering new ideas is slightly less engaging. Still a very good album, but if tempted to pick only one of these two, I would opt for "Inside". Fair 3,5 stars.