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Jon & Vangelis - Short Stories CD (album) cover

SHORT STORIES

Jon & Vangelis

 

Prog Related

3.15 | 114 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

SouthSideoftheSky
Special Collaborator
Symphonic Team
1 stars As opposed to the Friends Of Mr. Cairo album, here is one album I can sit through without feeling sick. Not without being bored, however. But we are spared the annoying movie samples, the awful drum machines and many of the worst programmed keyboard patterns of the follow up. There are even a couple of short decent passages on this album, but it takes an age to get to them. The lyrics range from so-so to really bad (sitting in a TV beside the tube?!). The vocals are very good, though (after all, it's Jon!) But a lovely voice must have something good to sing to make good music.

The keyboard sound is extremely thin for the most part and has more to do with the Synth Pop movement than with any form of Prog. Friends Of Mr. Cairo would go even further in a Synth Pop direction, but Short Stories is not even light Prog, or pop Prog, or New Age Prog. Rather, this is anti- Prog!

Not only the keyboard sound is thin, but the whole sound is extremely thin. It's basically just lead vocals, keyboards and occasional percussion instruments! Acoustic guitar can be heard on one track only, and it is hardly audible and certainly not Steve Howe material. So this is very minimalist music, and it becomes tedious very, very quickly. It is hard to grasp that one of the masterminds behind Close To The Edge and Gates Of Delirium could create something as mind-numbing as this.

Jon And Vangelis is really not my cup of tea. And even if Short Stories is much better than Friends Of Mr. Cairo, there is no question about the rating. Giving this album two stars would be an insult to the other two star albums like Yes' 90125, which is a masterpiece compared to this!

If you want to discover Jon's work outside Yes, his collaborations with Vangelis is the very last place to look. And Vangelis too has done far better music elsewhere. His Heaven And Hell album (on which Jon also makes an appearance) is far more interesting than any of the Jon And Vangelis albums.

Best avoid!

SouthSideoftheSky | 1/5 |

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