RENAISSANCE

I was quite interested to hear how the first incarnation of Renaissance sounded, and the marvelous album covers boosted this enthusiasm. I believe though that as I had been charmed by the following more famous line-up's romantic style on music creation, this more personal and lesser grandiose art rock didn't impact me very much, actually I felt disappointment when listening to these ancient artifacts. Possibly most annoying element on this band's musical idiom is the furious but still pedantic and unemotional piano. Jane Relf's vocal contributions are in quite small role at the band's sound. It is how ever interesting to listen how a classical symphonic feeling has being tried to be evoked with a quite small repertoire of instruments. Sadly these efforts did not succeed very in my opinion. There are some psychedelic improvisational jazzy sequences on the tracks too, which were not much present on the music of the forthcoming second line-up.

Some better parts of the opening track "Kings and Queens" resemble Procol Harum's piano driven sound, and the composition has a quite good verse. "Innocence" continues the style of the first song, some mesmerizing verses hidden among the serious, sacral art rock song. Some chamber music associations rise from the lifeless piano, which is thrown into the soup of bluesy dope rock along with some jazz maneuvers, the promising dish not tasting very good for me however. I managed to see a film of the band performing "Island" from the Beat Club television broadcast recordings, which was interesting experience, allowing to see the stiff fellows doing their thing. The composition is more folk rock oriented tune for the lady singer, her voice being very thin and fragile. Though I adore meditative spiritual music, this hymn sounded more like a cheap gospel tune. The latter half of the composition holds some direct quotations of Beethoven's piano sonatas, which I did not feel relying in pleasant context. The following song "Wanderer" grew as the most pleasing track of the record for me, harpsichords giving a relief for the piano expressionism and the rhythm holds pleasant groovy qualities. There are also some classical music quotations here again, and I guess the composition fitting better to Jane's vocal range, as the slightly deeper notes make her voice sound much more pleasant than on the previous "Islands" song. An association of psychedelic folk lullaby arose also in my mind for the characterization for this composition. The final mini epic "Bullet" continues to wander along the bluesy traits, and I continued to rip my pants whilst listening the male singer's voice resembling the voice of Boz Burrell. For my taste, the blues elements here don't manage to create anything wonderful, as the players can't kindle a good groove burning from the musical potentials, and both solos and melodic passages felt very conservative and unimaginative. The last moments of this song surprisingly offered a very peaceful non-rhythmic aural space of echoed vocals. It's a shame that these kind of innovative and tasteful details are counted on the album in very few numbers.

I guess this album could interest those music listeners more, who aren't so keen on the more famous second version of this band. Also my negative feelings arose certainly from my disability to digest the majority of the stylistic solutions of this record. But I believe checking out these semi-classic records is a worthy act, especially if my criticisms didn't feel promising, and if you can get a listen of them without spending any of your hard earned money on them. I managed to do my listening from an old vinyl, so I didn't get a change to be depressed by the bonus tracks; a potential act of allowing pearls for a swine.