CERULEAN BLUE

The vast majority of reviews for this album already posted on this website praise it highly and rightly so but maybe don't tell the whole story. Most of these reviews include detailed descriptions of the music and the story that is told so no point in me repeating it here but I'd like to give a balanced picture.

Yes the music is beautiful in an ethereal kind of way but there's not a lot of it. A total time of 54:22 is not a lot for a CD anyway and when all the narrations are taken out we are left with around 40 minutes of actual music. Still that's what we were used to in good old vinyl days (and often less)!

On the other hand on their website they only want £5.99 for the CD including p&p so you can't really complain about value for money and you can have all the MP3s for free!

Some may find this the most pretentious album of all time. Indeed one reviewer I see refers to all the narrations as "rather twee" and suggests Rain leaves them out in future. This is undoubtedly an example of someone finding this aspect a tad pretentious and unnecessary and is an understandable and valid point of view. Personally I think this rather misses the point of the album as the narrations are an integral part of this whole concept. One man's pretentious is another man's profound and I prefer the latter description.

Musically it is more like poetry with backing music, (with the possible exception of "Starcrossed" - the most readily accessible songlike track on the album), and the melodies, such as they are, sound almost made up as he goes along. Don't expect virtuoso solo instrumental performances either except for a couple of shortish sax parts. This all sounds very negative but I have to say it all seems to work together very well.

You also get on the CD a short video based on the story told in the album, and some text files including the lyrics and a transcript of a very long and profound/pretentious (take your pick) discussion about various deep topics between Rain and another guy.

I think the best description for this album is "interesting". It has certainly made me sit up and take notice more than any new album has done for a while. Another reviewer likens it to hearing Spock's Beard's early albums for the first time - I would say exactly the same thing but don't get the idea that the music is in any way similar because it is not. Nevertheless at £5.99 it is definitely recommended.