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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