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MKII - Burning Daylight
Artist: | MKII |
Title: | Burning Daylight |
Label: | SI Music Simply 56 |
Length(s): | 52 minutes |
Year(s) of release: | 1994 |
Month of review: | 07/1994 |
Line up
John Maycraft
Paul Keeble
Gary Mitchell
They play drums, guitars bass, tin whistles, mandolin and ansophone and do some
midi programming.
Tracks
1) | Expansion I | 4.08
|
2) | Cinquante | 1.22
|
3) | Expansion II | 5.11
|
4) | The Cube | 4.35
|
5) | Black Mountains Theme | 6.47
|
6) | Distance | 8.14
|
7) | Equinox | 2.23
|
8) | A Winter's Tale | 7.32
|
9) | Roubles | 0.31
|
10) | Burning Daylight Part I | 3.43
|
11) | Burning Daylight Part II | 8.26
|
At times (11) they are helped out by one Lol Cooper (on guitar).
All songs are by an idea by Maycraft except Roubles by Gary Mitchell.
Summary
The prank in SI magazine was that for the money that MKII spend on this album
Genesis might have bought themselves one rim for their Volkswagen.
If it was really made that cheap I wouldn't be able to tell, because it sounds
all clear and dustless to me.
The music
As anyone might have spotted this is the Geoff Mann Band minus Geoff Mann.
This however is not an album full of rockers that one might expect from such
a band. The thing is that they have left (as one might have expected) the
lyrics and vocals away, but they have changed the music as well (it even
surprised me!!).
The songs are quite simple in essence and at times quite repetitive, but they
do their job perfectly. The music is very guitaroriented, spacious (not spacy)
and not very heavy at that. It's music you can easily make your homework by, but
that you can also listen to intently, because it's really quite nice to follow
the melodies and interludes to the various places that they go.
Tracks of notice are Expansion II, because it reminds me a lot of a song on
Geoff Mann's Second Chants, Distance is a beautiful track dedicated to
Geoff Mann and played with feeling, like the other important track Burning
Daylight Part II.
It has been some time, but this is no neo-prog from SI, but an instrumental
Oldfield, Pink Floyd flavoured guitaralbum where the guitarplayer plays without
wanting only to play. There might also be some Bela Fleck (I might be wrong on
this one, because I'm not very familiar with them) or Jam Camp, because they
also have that nakedness in their songs (guitar and that's about it). MKII is
not jazzy or freaky, but the songs are not accessible like neo is, with which
I mean that the songs are not build on one melody. For all bands it holds
that the guitar is the pervasive instrument. Also Latimer is sometimes evoked
by the enormous dramatic potential in a song like Distance (I refer hereby
to a song like Stationary Traveller). A last reference that might
help is Gandalf. Guitar is also quite important with Gandalf, though Gandalf
uses it more as a melodic instrument and less a solo instrument. Still,
they share a bit the same style, though while Gandalf is kind of sweet, MKII
is more like crying.
Conclusion
Not meaning to debase Geoff Mann I can easily state, that Geoff is not missed,
because they have changed their style and made their own, not continuing with
the rocky Eh! style already acquired. I do am curious what
they will be up to next, because it's easy to end up in a dead end street with
music like this, because it's only beautiful and not breathtaking (beauty fades
on too much exposure).
Execellent album to relax by and to listen to.
© Jurriaan Hage