Reviews

How does anybody find the time to release an album every year when you have a daytime job consulting on computer solutions? Well you should ask Guy Manning. Because he is the musician who released an album every year since 1999. You should think that after such a long time the quality of music should be going to a very low level. No, that's not the case. Guy manages to come up with strong products every year. Also his new album "Anser Tree" is again of a very high level. People who did enjoy his last two efforts "One Small Step" and "A Matter of Live and Death" must certainly try his last effort. It contains the same mix of folk, jazz, rock, prog and classical references. You still can hear who his heroes were in the past. He very frankly told in an interview that he also liked the music made by bands such as Jethro Tull, Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant, Frank Zappa, Caravan, Van Der Graaf Generator and Renaissance. He also told the interviewer that he does not use a great deal of out and out widdly soloing on his albums. But thank God he again asked several musicians to play a solo spot. A good example is again Andy Tillison on the second album track "Jack Roberts". A great Moog solo did he include. Guy is also a storyteller and this album also contains a real concept. It's quite loose but he had composed a series of songs about historical figures set in their own time zones. He wanted to find a way to bind them all together. So he came up with the idea that they were all part of the same family tree. The characters stretch over 500 years from around 1605 in Scotland to the same place in 2089. He also took on board the that the world had succumbed to global warming chaos and polar caps had melted. He did this to add an ecological aspect to the storyline. He did this to make it more dynamic and give background reasoning to the final piece. The artwork very much helped to visualize this imaginary story. Ed Unitsky did again a great job. But then again strong albums do need great artwork. Guy told in the already mentioned interview that he is easily bored and the writing and creating of the songs is the most enjoyable part of the process. So let's all hope that he is again very soon bored so that we have another fine album in our CD player. **** (Henri)

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