To most people High Spy will be a rather unknown British progressive rock band. The initiator of this group is keyboardist Mark Price, who played in several other bands like Final Conflict, Framework and Grace. In January 2007 he decided to form his own band. In the same year he released Rebirth: The Big Machine , an album that mainly contains older work. Head For The Moon, the first official studio album, appeared in 2009. After a couple of live albums High Spy recently released their second studio album called Ignition. Next to Mark Price the line-up on Ignition consists of Adrian Peddie (lead vocals), Lee Steinberg-Weston (bass), Mark Stokes (guitars) and guest musician Rick Maper (drums). The album contains eight tracks and in my opinion On The Breeze and Mirror Man, the two long epic pieces, are the highlights. On these compositions bands like Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree must have inspired these musicians the most. The lyrics of some of the songs really have something to say. A song like The Eyes Of The World deals with the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks in the USA; Mirror Man is about the death of Michael Jackson, ' The King Of Pop'. On both tracks they used samples of news reports in order to give these compositions more depth. On the other hand the album contains a song called Cappuccino and you might wonder what the significance is of a song about coffee. Well, I think everything is possible because then again, the instrumental tune Arrival is about space travelling... Summarizing you could say that High Spy recorded a rather mature album that mainly will be enjoyed by people who love the music of Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree. However, also other influences can be heard on Ignition but these aren't that easy to describe. Therefore I'll stick to these two names! *** Henri Strik (edited by Peter Willemsen) Where to buy? |
