THE WAKE - LIVE AT DE BOERDERIJ, ZOETERMEER

The Wake has long been my favourite neo prog album so it was interesting to find they had recorded a live version only a year ago. IQ's last studio album 'Frequency' was a corker in no small measure thanks to the dynamic and powerfull drumming of Andy Edwards. However he left and original drummer Paul Cook returned.'Cookie' had retired from music to concentrate on his farm in Scotland so I presume he must have missed his old mates and answered the call to fill the drum stool. Here he provides an excellent base allowing the others to do what they do best. IQ is one of the tightest bands around as this shows.Remarkably all the energy that they had 25 years ago is still well intact. Pete Nicholls sings as if his life depends on it while Mike Holmes is surely one of the most underrated guitarists with his ability to play such wonderfull melodies.John Jowittt is Mr Reliable while Mark Westworth does a fine job on keyboards. The production is top notch having that 'straight from boards' feel about it. Some live recordings just don't sound live but this does and its all the better for it. In fact its so good that I would recommend this in favour to the original album especially as you get a very nice bonus DVD of the whole performance with a few bonus tracks. The Wake will always be a solid five gold masterpeice for me. There are no bad songs whatsoever and the whole work is paced excellently. Get this and fall in love over again with one of the eighties prog albums that established neo prog.

The Wake represents my first introduction to IQ and it was phenomenal to me personally. I remember vividly how the cassette that I purchased was one of the cassettes I regularly played in addition to Marillion who also released the third seminal album "Misplaced Childhood". But one memorable experience with The Wake was when I worked offshore to install and hook-up the oil and gas platformed owned by Hudbay Oil at Malacca Strait in early 1987. My first son, Endro, was not yet born and I was sent by the company I worked for, McDermott, to be the hook-up engineer for the two platforms named as MWD and MWE. I was stationed at DB 17 (Derrick Barge 17) owned by McDermott for approximately two months period. During that period I brought with me saome prog cassettes (hey, by that time there was no iPod, no MP3 and CD was just born but I did not own most prog music on CD format - so I had a stack of Marillion, Pendragon, Pallas, IQ and Peter Gabriel in the media of cassettes. What a life!).

I worked twelve hours a day and in shift system. So whae I worked daylight I used the evening to play the cassettes outloud in the guest room of this wonderfully furnished Derrick Barge where it had also great tape compo as well. WoW! I was astonished with the music of IQ especially "The Wake" (the second track) where I kept rewinding two to three times before moving forward to next track. In fact I started loving IQ right then in the DB 17 of McDermott!!! What a memorable event, really! And since then I love the band until now.

This live set is really excellent despite only two original members played here: Peter Nicholls (vox) and Mike Holmes (guitar). The rest of the band: Tim Essau (bass) was replaced by John Jowitt, Paul Cook (drums) replaced by Andy Edwards, and Martin Orford (keys) was replaced by Mark Westworth. But ...don't worry ... I still get the same or at least "similar" nuances as the album was originally recorded in 1985. The setlist has been made exactly the same as the studio album only that it had now the "intro" live version. One intersting point is that the sonic quality has been made closer to the original studio recording as this one is raw in sound. I compare this with ForEVER Live sound quality which has modern quality of sound. I am sure the band decided to make this record as close as possible with the original recording.

Performance-wise, I think this is really excellent! For those who love IQ, you should not miss this one! Keep on proggin' ....!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

This is a live recording of a full performance of IQ's classic mid-1980s album The Wake (plus a brand new intro), recorded in 2010 to mark the album's 25th anniversary. It's a somewhat different IQ lineup here from the one who originally recorded the album, but with old reliable himself Mike Holmes still on guitar and Peter Nicholls on vocals the link to the source recording is very much present.

At the same time, the band don't feel themselves obligated to simply regurgitating the album as it was originally presented in the studio: as well as adding a new intro, they spruce up aspects of the songs here and there where it's called for whilst playing other parts straight where the original interpretations will suffice - allowing the veteran band members the chance to draw on the experience of decades of playing this material, whilst the newer members have the freedom to make their own marks on the material rather than trying to mimic their predecessors.

This is particularly notable with Mark Westworth's keyboards, since he clearly sees no obligation to restrict himself to mimicing the vintage sounds of the equipment Martin Orford used on the original album, but the other band members work in some surprises here and there. Some songs are still played very true to the original, others have had more tweaking; perhaps the biggest difference can be heard in the performance of Corners here, always a bit of a divisive song when the original album when it comes to consideration of the studio release, which has a swathe of new textures which gives it a really fresh new spin. (Plus check out Mike sneaking in some of the opening melodies of The Last Human Gateway in towards the end!)

The end result is a live album which is a perfect complement to its source material - the one is not a substitute for the other, but if you love one you'll find the other a refreshing different look at its counterpart.