The second album from this Australian band.
Unitopia was a sextet on this album with a lineup of gongs, bells, drums, percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals.
Four others contributed viola, violin, flutes, saxes, cello and xtra vocals.
The garden is a massive undertaking. A 2 CDs album, no less. It also comes three years after their good debut album More Than A Dream. You will find my review here.
I was actually listening a lot to The Garden when it was released. I am a loss to explain why I did not review it back then for ProgArchives. Maybe the 100 minutes plus of complex neo-prog scared me off.
Complex progressive rock with neo-prog as a basis is what we get here. The music has both more melodic songs and some rather complex songs. Overall, the music is complex and this is not an easy listening album. But this is not an avant-garde album by any means.
The vocals are very good. The other musicians also does their best. The sound is very good too.
There are some really good songs here and some not so good songs. The instrumental tracks here are a bit lacking in quality. Most important, there is no really great piece of music here. Music which would have elevated this album.
This is a by all means a good album. But it feels a bit unfulfilled and an album where the skills did not match the ambitions of the band.
3 points
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