The Ringmaster continues in what we might call the 'Oldfield genre', but for three albums Rob has been evolving his own unique style of it, and here is where it fully breaks out. Exhilarating melodies and rhythms, epic scale, and pristine yet intimate production, all with hints of a fairytale story just out of sight. Actual fave track is 'The Gatekeeper/The First Large Water', with its QE2 vibes. nickgreen90125
The album takes off nicely with David Longdon's "The Strangest Times", but then gets into immediate free fall and deeply underwater for the next few tracks, quite unexpectedly. Fortunately, it recovers with Nick D'Virgilio's "Apollo" (hey, this guy CAN write good music, although he hides this ability most of the time) and the remaining three tracks, one of which is another Longdon masterpiece. So in the end the final impression is somewhat in the positive range. Sven B. Schreiber (sbs)