RELAYER

MORE LIKE 'GATES OF DE-DREARY-UM'. This is just dull 'technoflash'. There's not even an attempt at crafting songs, it's just fancy instrumental work for the most part. Very tough on the casual listener. The music is totally directionless, pointless and uninteresting. The vocals are rushed and lack feeling, and even if the lyrics mean something, they don't make any impact. Sometimes the vocals get buried in the mix anyway, so you'll have to listen carefully, really carefully, to hear what John is saying.

It's to Patrick Moraz's discredit that he contributed to this, since he made such an impression on the music of the 'Moody Blues' in the early 80s. That said, his keyboards are taking a back seat to the guitar work on this album. They actually are very much in the background on here, with the guitars being the main instrument, the bass is usually the second main instrument. Poor Patrick, he is always treated poorly by these bands!

"The gates of Delirium" is a 20-minute exercise that has a nice, fantasy ballad at the end, "Soon", but the opening 15 minutes is mindless, endless soloing. Actually I like it from about 12:50 onwards. "Sound Chaser"? It chases sound but only ever achieves 'Noise' and 'To be over' is nice, growing on me, but wasn't this sitar thing done on "Tales from Topographic Oceans" anyway?

These songs feel like nothing more than an 'exercise' in making long songs. It's not bad music but an average, inspiration-less prog album, and there are so many good ones out there, so why waste your time on this?