Reviewed by Tony Cummings

IN THE MAINSTREAM
The cheap shots taken at Rick by much of the mainstream media on the release of this project is pretty predictable. Let’s face it, even with prog rock making a small modernised comeback, a full on concept album on the theme of space travel was always going to be perceived as a project belonging to an earlier, grandiose era. Yet for those prepared to ignore the self appointed gatekeepers of cool, this hugely ambitious project has considerable musical inventiveness, huge technical virtuosity and no little emotional grandeur. The contributions by the English Chamber Choir are spine tingling, Rick’s dazzling keyboard work less old school Yes than some critics suggested and though Damian West’s histrionic vocals take a little getting used to on the whole, they work too across the densely textured, polyrhythmic outpourings.