HAT AND FIELD

The Swan Lake 5:46. Very catchy start of an album, soft key to a strong guitar with a tune you can follow, pretty slick, bass flying some notes of it's own. Keys following then completely take over with bass up and down back to full guitar excellent keys above. Tempo and style to pure elec guitar. Steeling the show. drums, bass, keys all doing fine job. Full sound chord changes wonderful. Oh, nice acoustic then back to top to close this. 4.7

Little Pieces pt.1 1:37 soft key with swirls overhead-nice-unratable

Suite: Hat and Field 10:03 strong start precision! Nice guitars and a Rush from Xanadu sounding bass chord, good feeling electric guitar comes in back to acoustic to elec, almost Christmasy. Elec guitar just playing as nicely as Chuck Mangione plays his trumpet. 4.5 min in change tempo, very nice acoustic. subtle tones can fill you here. Put you out of body. Definate mood music (any). They take their time any give you what you want, hitting all the right notes and chords. 8m. Oh my, bass guitar up tempo precision again! Very straight forward when elec guitar comes in with impressive keys and pounding drum, this IS very structured and difficult composition. Intense and sudden end. 4.8

goes right into "Mizzle" 3:45. Keeping the tension going, up pace each instrument having a shot at lead. Strong piece, full sound. Very solid. 4.1

Canterbury Tale 3:00 Guitar takes a lead at this with backing chords once again taking a very favorable melody. Almost meloncholy then, satisfaction feeling. 4.3

Magic Carpet 6:59 Keys open this with very dark backing then a sax enters in chord changes, off key but enter guitar with key and a dat dat dat. This is a jazzyish piece till the electric guitar overtakes it at 3m. Now we start jammin a bit. Broken jazz I'd say. (whenever I hear an electric guitar it is difficult to associate it with jazz). I had previously (in my system given this an 8.8 or 4.4, I'm going to drop that to a flat 4. Still instrumentally very impressive. Specially the end.

Little Pieces pt.2 2:33 Very very nice piano! 4.6

Pipe Dream 7:55 I had previously written in my own notes "Anthony Phillips take off of Geese and the Ghost" and that is exactly what it is. Copywrite infringement???? Played with keys (you'll recognize the melody). This upsets me because Phillips is one of my favorite artists. Besides that this is a bit too techno for me, of course until 3:45 when the electric guitar starts in, then it just got very impressive with it's own (not stolen) melody. It is almost the center section of ASoMF. Damn it I have to give it a 3.9 for a strong mid section, back to copywrite to close, even has cannon fire at end. Maybe it was dedicated to him, further inquiry needed.

All in all a 4.5 album. Wish I could rate it as such.