SPACE REVOLVER

It is very interesting to read so various opinions on the music of The Flower Kings (TFK). Some contributors go for the "5-star" mark, whereas others go for the low "1-star". Well, everybody is entitled to think what they want... no problem with that. It all depends on the feelings you have when you put a CD on your plate, and I would say about the 'type' of prog you like. What I like to see is that people who have "symphonic-prog" as their best 'genre' do score TFK kind of very high. And I totally agree, because it is my favorite 'genre' and TFK are around the top of the sympho-prog groups, being recognized as such by the rest of the world... and me ! Then, I continue rating all the TFK CD's, because I feel they deserve the time spent in writing opinions, as they are (in my view) a super prog-group.

In Space Revolver, I see them continuing producing a very fine outing, with again songs that have very diverse moods and constructions. And lenghts. And power. And high quality sound... As usual, I prefer the longer songs, as prog music is more typical in general, and thrilling in particular from TFK. The main ones are : "Monster Within" and "Rumble Fish Twist" which are powerful, with a lot of different feelings. My huge favorite is the first one "I am the Sun-1", which is one of my all-TFK favorites. It begins slowly, and then explodes in a quite heavy slow tempo, with a lot of power and 'contretemps'. It gets more intense, as they play the theme for a third time. Some would say : "it is like pop- music... refrain-variations-refrain"... Nope ! They repeat but the intensity is different, with more ambient sounds. The "in-between" parts are also different, as they know how to modify a scheme of musical construction. That's their strenght, in fact. Never the same, never boring. And it concludes (5-6 minutes...) with a smoother end.

It is another excellent production, a typical TFK music. In my view, there is less thrill-producing music than for "Stardust" or "Flower-Power", but it remains a very solid TFK long CD.