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A couple of years or so after starting this site, it occurred to me that it's all very well creating vast lists of album titles, but maybe it would be nice to include a little commentary. I'm often getting mail asking me what such-and-such album sounds like, so I made the momentous decision to start the lengthy (!) process of writing a few lines about some of the albums on the list. Of course, as I've only heard about a quarter of the albums I've listed there will be huge gaps in this section, but maybe these reviews will give you some idea of what's around.
Highlighting in album tracklistings denotes 'contains Mellotron', leading to some tracklistings being solidly highlighted. If a tracklisting has no highlights, the Mellotron is so indistinct that there's no point, which should be made clear in the text and the rating. On 'multi-part' tracks I've tried to indicate which parts contain 'Tron, although this isn't always possible. I've added album timings to as many entries as possible, although some of them may not be completely accurate as I may be working from timings on LP labels/sleeves. If there's no timing at all, there's a variety of possible reasons, and hopefully one will be added at a later date. Some entries have no cover image; although I've worked out a good way to get decent scans from LP sleeves (digicam - thanks, Gary!), a few of the reviews are from tape/CD-R copies of out of print rarities, with no cover art. I've downloaded some images from the 'Net, but I can't guarantee the quality of these, as I've often had to enlarge quite small gifs, often scanned in at a criminally low dpi rate. Oh, and by the way, none of the album sleeve images on this site are my 'property' (other webmasters please take note), whether or not I scanned them originally, so please feel free to use any of them! This does NOT mean 'please hotlink to them and use up my expensive bandwidth', however.
Ratings (music):
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Ratings (Mellotronness):
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A quick word or two on the 'ratings' system; the * rating is a regular 'how good do I think this album is?' one, and is mostly based on my own taste, though I do try to make allowances for perfectly good records that I just don't like. Problematically, I find it difficult to justify giving the full five to anything less than pretty much flawless albums, which causes problems with 'mostly utterly brilliant' efforts like In the Court of the Crimson King or Selling England By the Pound, both let down by one ropey track. There seems to be a bit of a jump from *** 'average' to ***½ 'good', with no 'above average' rating, but if I drop 'average' to **½, it doesn't feel right, even though on a scale of five, **½ is actually as much the median point as ***. Of course, since I tend to hear more of the good than the bad, although there are more 'poor' ratings, they are used less, leading to a glut of ***½s. Oh well. The 'T' rating is meant to tell you something about the album's Mellotron content, which is why it goes from '0', not '½'. I don't feel I could give any album 'null points', but if there's Mellotron credited, but it's entirely inaudible, I reserve the right to give it a big fat zero on the Ts. Please remember that this is no slur on the album itself, although the * rating may well be.
A thought on compilations: I normally avoid these, as there's little point in telling you that 'Strawberry Fields Forever' is on every Beatles compilation ever (with the ludicrous exception of 1), or there are 73 Moody Blues 'best ofs' available. However... many late-'60s bands were primarily singles artists, and what's really needed in those cases is a review of a good overview compilation, so I've started putting these in. There are also a few cases where the compilation is the only way to easily obtain a band's music, or several relevant albums or singles are combined onto one useful 2-CD set, so they've gone in, too.
As time goes on and I review more and more albums, I'm beginning to realise that I may be starting to repeat myself. It's actually quite difficult to find anything much to say about a middling sort of album; you know, perfectly pleasant, but rather unexciting, so apologies for reusing a few favourite phrases, particularly with regard to an album's Mellotron content. Writing these reviews makes me realise just how much good music has little Web presence; I now feel I should start up another site just to write about all the other great bands who don't fit into this site's remit! I really want to rave on about Happy the Man, Max Webster, Locanda Delle Fate, Banco, Echolyn etc.etc. One day...
Of course, as this site concentrates on the Mellotronic aspects of the music, the same applies to these reviews. The Web is full of sites reviewing often the most obscure albums from a 'regular' viewpoint; I've listed some of the best below. It's fairly obvious that I listen to a lot of prog - if anyone would like to submit reviews of other stuff from a Mellotronic viewpoint, particularly recent American bands, please feel free - all submissions credited.
October 2003 update: Shockingly, I have actually finished my reviews backlog, having now trawled through over 500 artists, so the only additions from now on will be new stuff I get in, or reviews sent in by you lot.
January 2006: backlog's up to 300... (sigh).
August 2006: backlog's back down to zero! I have no life.
For those of you that seem to appreciate such things, here's a few links to some of the more vicious put-downs to be found amongst the 500+ artists reviewed here.
Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock The first online progressive site, and possibly still the most comprehensive
Gnosis Top prog site, with exhaustive album ratings
Zoltan's Progressive Rock Webpage Nice pic of a Mellotron on this one...
Unger's Wonderful World of Progressive Rock
Progressor Uzbekistan Progressive Rock Pages
Italian Prog No reviews per se, but an excellent resource
Italian Progressive Rock Another excellent resource on the subject
