Released: 1998
Tracks: Cerulean Sea; Interlude; Original Sin; Etude Revisited; A Palace of Pearls (on a blade of grass); Interlude; Fin de Siècle; DrumBass; Cracking the Midnight Glass; Torn DrumBass; Thick With Thin Air; Cobalt Canyons; Interlude; Deeper Blue; Presidents Day
Best track: Etude Revisited
Tracks to skip: Cracking the Midnight Glass, Thick With Thin Air, Cobalt Canyons and Presidents Day
This album starts out so incredible. The first 4 tracks (not including the first Interlude) are just awesome. When I heard those, I thought this was going to be one amazing album. Well, uh, then we have Fin de Siècle (End of the Century, in French) which is decent, but it tries way too hard to be clever. I like that Tony Levin can make counter-melodies on his instrument by himself, but it doesn’t make for a good song. Then we come to Cracking the Midnight Glass that not only sucks, but also shouldn’t be credited to Bruford/Levin/Torn. I think the main songwriting credit should be Page/Plant/Bonham. I have no problem with small tributes to bands such as Zeppelin, but to blatantly rip off Kashmir is awful. And to then have it be a crappy song makes it so much worse.
I am still so disappointed in this album. After the Zep rip-off fest, it just keeps going downhill. I think Deeper Blue is a great song, but it’s the only worthwhile thing after the first four tracks. As listed above, 4 tracks are skippers. Not counting the 3 Interludes and the 2 DrumBasses (which are just slight colorations, not real songs) there’s only 10 songs on here, with 4 outright sucking and 1 kinda boring. Does that make this album a 50? Not quite, but it is disappointing. I really love these guys as individual players, esp. Bruford and Levin, and David Torn & Chris Botti are excellent as well. And knowing the talents of these guys I was hoping this album was going to just explode all over my stereo and totally fry my brain. I’m still waiting for that to happen. If I just heard the first 4 tracks, then yeah, I’d be drooling about this album. Actually, I think that’s what did happen… I heard the first few tracks and thought “I HAVE to get this!”, but once I actually got it, I was very disappointed. It’s sad when you have 4 super creative and talented people who come up with 5 great tracks, but then have 5 boring ones too. Tony Levin is one my biggest influences and favorite bassists ever, and it so pains me to have to talk bad about his work, but it’s necessary here. This is not a good album.
Rating: 65
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