SLIDING

Transcience started in late-90's as a personal project of Land's End keyboardist Fred Hunter after the last album of the later ''Natural selection'', but is soon became a normal band featuring all Land's End members (Jeff McFarland on vocals,guitar and guest appearances by Francisco Neto on guitars, Mark Lavallee on drums) along with sax player Steve Ades.For the debut of Transience Fred Hunter is responsible for the bass parts, keyboards and drum programming in some tracks, this was entitled ''Sliding'' and released in 2000 by Cyclops.

While the album is not completely different from LAND'S END releases, it sure lacks the hidden power and energy of ''Pacific Coast Highway'' for example and is much based on its emotional content, the hypnotic dreamy musicianship and the sensitive vocals.There is a constant use of synths, organ, guitars and rhythm section along with some sound effects to make this album a combination of Neo Prog, Electronic Music, New Age and LAND'S END-ish Space Rock, what however went completely wrong is the total absence of some grandiose parts, dynamic musicianship or even some catchy sections.The music is very mellow, relaxing and comfortable to a negative point it gets quite boring with only a couple of exceptions.The first long track, the 12-min. ''Desert falls'' is hardly memorable, demanding or captivating and only after some 30 minutes of neutral stuff the listener finds a salvation on ''Captive island'' and the incredible work on guitars and bombastic, spacey synthesizers.There is also another huge epic included, the very long 19-min. ''The seven pools'', which is quite decent but definitely overstretched with some good solos, sensitive acoustic parts and a couple of nice, spacey piano leads, but its long duration hardly make it an essential piece of music.

For anyone searching for some relaxing background music, emotional sonngwriting or anyone who want to dive deep into LAND'S END history, ''Sliding'' has some value.But be warned that the material flirts often with New Age grounds than Progressive Rock.If only this one had some more energy...