VISA

Duncan Mackay, a promising (UK born) piano wunderkind from South Africa, equipped with a collection of cutting edge polyphonic and mono synths, with the Hammond organ being his weapon of choice, set out to the world of the British Isles to unfold the wings of his musical career as a session keyboard player, and presumably escape the unyielding restrictive regime of apartheid. In 1977 Score, a full blown symphonic prog album featuring a philharmonic orchestra plus a phenomenal circle of guest performers (many of whom can now be considered legendary), like John Wetton, Andy McCullogh and Mel Collins, saw the light of day. A triumphant step up into a higher dimension from his previous effort, Chimera (1974, recorded in South Africa), which to be fair, I can safely describe as a second-rate Keith Emerson study piece that suffers from underwhelming lead vocals (provided by Mackay himself) and quite anemic production. Score was in my view a magnificent piece of art which blended Mackay's eclectic array of influences with the real deal progressive rock energy, that by 1977 was starting to eat its own tail in the UK and slowly being retooled into more accessible and radio-friendly formats by the once upper echelon bands like Yes, Genesis, ELP, and even smaller acts like Gentle Giant. I think Score, despite being one of the last great British progressive rock efforts, was definitely one of the best (a swan song of sorts).

With the essence of the dawn of the new decade around the corner, in 1980, Duncan Mackay decided to jump into the rapidly rising electronic music bandwagon, while unfortunately also jumping the shark and released... Visa.

It's a ruthlessly, shockingly "dollar bin keyboard" sounding work, but not in a cool jazzy funky way, like those Rompler/Workstation demo tunes or Demoscene/Keygen music. No, this is much much more uninspired and tasteless. Vangelis and JMJ got it right, but Mackay's album, even if technically at around the same level, lacked the emotional (human) aspect. Imagine the bottom barrel of DOS/Adlib video game music, the kinda stuff that's usually done by amateur "composers" as an afterthought for a shovelware game that has a deadline approaching, but somehow even more yucky. 🤮 But, to be fair, the one thing about Visa that really makes it a pain to sit thru is the repetitive, cookie cutter writing, a true sign of an artistic burnout.

I can't imagine what Duncan Mackay was thinking when he was ready to release this stinker. xD Perhaps he had too much faith in the emerging sound synthesis technology and drum machines, and thought it was good for the already low standards of the musical direction he had chosen or, I dunno, at least passable? Except.... he was dead wrong. What a mess! Visa sounds like a product that hasn't been finished, that also aged poorly.

The only tolerable song on this record, that doesn't make me cringe from embarrassment, is the penultimate track Night Flight, with its only saving grace being the fact it reminds me of Alexander Brandon's soundtrack to the 90's shoot em up Tyrian.