The fourth album from this UK artist.
Duncan Mackay is doing the keyboards here and he has got help from Georg Voros on drums.
Duncan Mackay is the keyboard player in Alan Parsons Project and also, very unofficially, did keyboards for Budgie, the Welsh hard rockers.
I did a review of his 1974 debut album Chimera back in November 2014 for # 1 of this blog. You can read the review here. I was not overly impressed by that album. I have chosen to ignore his second and third album. Then I got this album and was sold on the idea of a concept album about the code breakers in Bletchley Park. Alan Turing and his fellow code breakers. The creators of today's computers.
Well, this is not really a concept album. It is more like an Alan Parsons Project album with lots of keyboards and dramatic songs. This includes a cover version of Kate Bush excellent (and underrated) The One With The Child In Her Eyes from her debut album.
Why Duncan Mackay has chosen to change one word here (changed Man with One) from the Kate Bush song is strange. It is still a cover version. Ditto for his version of ELP's Fanfare For The Common Man which here is renamed Fanfare For The Uncommon Man.
His version of the Kate Bush song is not good and his version of the ELP song is barely acceptable.
The title track of this album is good, I have to give him that. The rest of the album is not bad either. The cover versions merely shadows of themselves. His ode to Johan Sebastian Bach is also good.
This album is a bit unhinged with ELP, Kate Bush and some keyboards wizardry thrown in together. To a large extent, this album sounds like an ELP album. But not one of their best. I have my reservations against this album and rates it somewhere between decent and good.
2.5 points
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