THE KEY, PART II - THE LABYRINTH

In the early nineties Clive Nolan, the great progwizard from the UK was active in quite a few bands or projects. He became member of the already famous Pendragon, had his own band Shadowland but also participated in Casino and in this "project" Strangers on a Train (later some solo and duo projects and of course Arena). It was a period in which I bought a lot of progalbums without really knowing what I bought, I only knew it was prog so that was enough. Strangers on a Train's Labyrinth wasn't a complete guess because I heard it on a SI-sampler and was quite impressed. There weren't too many female singers around in prog and Tracey Hitching was doing a good job in my believe. It also sounded a bit classical almost and that intrigued me as well. That classical aspect was very much present in Hijrah, the instrumental track on the album and it's a very vivid and interesting track. In the other songs the vocals of Tracey and Alan Reed (Pallas) alternate and sometimes sing together, it's all sounding really good. The instrumental parts of the songs are very much products of mr. Nolan, the man is a genius. This whole album is more or less comparable with a classical symphony so if you like classical music in general you could check this out.

Another striking thing is the build up of the songs, especially the two longer tracks, Darkwood and Endzone are very special in this respect. This is all in all a very good product and I would almost give it the full 5 stars but since it's all a bit too decent for my liking (I'm more of the rougher stuff) I give it 4 (almost 4.5)