LILY ON THE BEACH

The quite unusual lineup of this Nth TD soundtrack is probably the most interesting thing of the album. Jerome Froese (so two guitarists in a shot) and acoustic winds that were probably missed from the TD instruments since long time ago, as if I'm not wrong the last flute was used on "Alpha Centauri". by some Ugo Dennenbourg.

Unfortunately also this soundtrack is full of standardized 80s electronic. Not bad if it wasn't TD. Almost the whole album sounds like what Peter Bardens was doing in the same period, but all the keyboardist were actually using the same equipment, so it's not a strange thing.

Musically it's just a collection of short instrumentals in the TD style of the 80s, that means: if you don't look to the album cover they can be anybody. The newage flavor is present throughout the album, but let me say that the newage has been for me an alternative to the 80s poorness in a period when there was really few prog available.

It's an album I can listen to without disappointment as I'm aware that I'm not listening to the space rock of Zeit. This is what TD were doing in studio and it's not worse than the output of similar electronic artists of that period. I still prefer any TD album to J.M. Jarre, just to mention an example.

Tracks like "Mount Shasta" show an unintentional connection with Mike Oldfield and even if none of the album tracks deserves to be remembered in the next century there aren't too weak moments and effectively all the album can be "consumed" while doing something else.

Hard fans of Bardens, Vangelis and of course TD (as I am) can really enjoy this "light" album, still more oriented to electronics than to newage, so I think it can have three stars without making a scandal.