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Rick Wright - Broken China

Artist:	Rick Wright
Title:	Broken China
Label:	EMI UK 7243 8 53645 2 5
Length(s):	59 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1996
Month of review:	11/1996

Line up

Rick Wright - keyboards
Anthony Moore - programming and arrangements
Manu Katche - drums
Dino Palladino - bass
Sinead O'Connor - vocals on 12 and 16
Kate St. John - oboe, cor anglais
Sian Bell - cello
Tim Renwick, Dominic Miller, Steve Bolton - guitar

Tracks

1)	Breaking Water	2.28
2)	Night Of A Thousand Furry Toys	4.22
3)	Hidden Fear	3.28
4)	Runaway	4.01
5)	Unfair Ground	2.22
6)	Satellite	4.07
7)	Woman Of Custom	3.44
8)	Interlude	1.17
9)	Black Cloud	3.19
10)	Far From The Harbour Hill	6.10
11)	Drowning	1.38
12)	Reaching For The Rail	6.31
13)	Blue Room In Venice	2.47
14)	Sweet July	4.13
15)	Along The Shoreline	4.37
16)	Breakthrough	4.20

Summary

Well, we all know this guy. After Wet Dream we haven't heard from him as a solo artist, but now he is back with a concept album. I do believe the album is only available as an import in the States so find out if it's worth the trouble, right here.

The music

Like we may expect from a PF member, this album by Rick Wright is a well packaged product, with good artwork: a woman diving as it were into a depression and as a result being shattered, broken in pieces, while the back of the booklet shows the rising from that depression. This album is a concept album about clinical depressions, a thing Rick encountered in this own life (not himself). People might think that this is not a happy album, and they are perfectly right. Totalling an hour in length this album has modern sound, and much more modern than I expected. The music sometimes goes into the direction of ambient huse and related to this it reminds me in style, a lot of a soundtrack. The singing is done by Wright on half the tracks almost and Sinead sings on two tracks, among which the best track of the album, Breakthrough. Because of the conceptapproach the songs on this album lack a bit of identity and sometimes they are not much more than a few melodies without any real structure. Not surprisingly this holds mostly for the instrumentals. Another strong track is Reaching for the Rail sung by both vocalists.

Conclusion

The most important thing on this album is the atmosphere the music evokes and this one is usually sad. In a way one can compare this to PF, but the music of the band is more song directed and less down then what is found here. An intriguing album.