Wednesday 15 November 2017

However - Sudden Dusk (1981)


The debut album from this US band.

However was a quartet with a lineup of woodwinds, various bells, drums, bass, clavinet, synths, autoharp, glockenspiel, guitars and vocals.
Various guest musicians provided cello, violin, vibraphone, xylophone, whistling, marimba and woodwinds.

This US band released two albums before they gave up the ghost. I am reviewing their second album later this month too/you will find a review of their second album somewhere else in this blog.

The high praise in ProgArchives and the jazz/fusion label made me purchase these albums. Well, Sudden Dusk is not a jazz/fusion album.

Take the most weird jazzy things from the Canterbury scene and add a lot of Frank Zappa to the mix. Frank Zappa without the vocals, I hasten to add. Add a lot of weird avant-garde jazz too and you get this album.

Something I don't mind at all. This fifty minutes long album though has it's own things going on though. There is a lot of woodwinds and bells here. There is not so much vocals here.

The ten songs here sounds like scetches and not really finished products. The really worked through tracks here are good. The scetches is just frustrating and not so good.

This is an album that I am struggling with. Both to really form an opinion about and to really agree with those who rates it as a great album. It is not a great album. It is merely a decent to good album and a frustrating one too.

2.5 points


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