REVIEW OF ADVENTURES OF THE IMAGINATION

By Magnus Beronius

FINALLY HE IS BACK - "IN COMIN' BOOGIE, TWELVE A CLOCK"! This time with a instrumental CD that has all the 'Schenker-Flying-V-Trademarks' - every single tone vibrates SCHENKER!

It starts up with Achtung Fertig, Los - Ready Steady Go, it's an up-tempo-rocker with a nice pace & a little touch of blues, nice guitarplay/fretwork through the whole track. It's a 'happy' song & could work as an kick-off on he's next tour!? Next track is called Open Gate and has the same 'feeling', up-tempo-rocker & a 'happy' song with lots of small 'insert-solos'. It could have been a bit longer in the end when the solo is getting 'warm' ... Three Fish Dancing is one of the 'master-pieces' on this album. 14 minutes long with lots of various mods, slow, fast, heavy & soft + acoustic guitarplay as well. I like the 'middle' section best, that's about 5 min. in the track, starts up nice & soft, accelerates to a high-tempo-rocker with great & of course perfect fretwork! Ends up softly combined with good solid axework. The fourth track is called Michael Schenker Junior and is a nice & calm track. It moves on like a waltz with beautiful and typical Schenker-solo's. Well - the next 'master-piece' out is Aardvark In A VW Smoking A Cigar, my favorite! And again lots of various mods. I like the part about 1,30 min in the track, it has a Irish sound a-la-Gary Moore - great fretwork with high tones that changes to 'screaming' tones!!! And all of a sudden we have that nice 'waltz' again .... switching over to 'heavy-blues' and then into a classic heavy metal solo .... back into acoustic guitar a-la Thank You. Great ending with various typs of solo [the last 4 min.], it's like he could't decide which one was best - WELL they all are 'F.G.'! Track no. 6 is probably written/dedicated to his wife - I Want To Be With You. Soft and nice, plain & simple and straight forward guitarplay with a typical Schenker ending solo. Old Man With Sheep On Mars does not sound he's old! Starts up fresh like a rocker and then again different typs of solo and mods: a little bit of heavy metal, rock and soft music. Ends-up with a great 'heart-screaming' solo, but I think that Michael's guitar is to 'low' compare to the rest of the 'arrangement' .... Next track out is At The End Of The Day it's like the Thank You album but with a FLYING V - electric! I'm sure that this one will grow on everyone. The 'back-guitar' is acoustic and in 'front' Michael works with he's electricguitar doin' nice solos that's comin' in&out... The last track is the last track. Hand In Hand. Mostly keybord and very sweet, I have no comments. WELL on a scale between 4 to 7 I give this CD +7 points! I'm a dieHard fan of Michael Schenker and this is what I've been waiting for a LOOOOOONG time, since Assault Attack!!!! I'm sure that the next comin' Instrumental album - 'Michael Schenker 2000' - will be as good as this one!

Just a small reflection, I Wanda - no I mean - I wonder how this record would have sounded if he had Simon Phillips on drumms & Barry Sparks doin' the bass, well we will never know .... I'm Out - Lights out!

Magnus Beronius 26/3/2000
magnus.beronius@seb.se


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