Artist: Wetton & Downes
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2006
Rating: 0.5/5
“Acoustic TV Broadcast” is something different. Asia and Icon “the acoustic way”. For those of you who don’t like long reviews, let me say up front that the instrumental castration on “Acoustic TV Broadcast,” apart from being different and conditionally interesting, has absolutely nothing special going for it that’s worth mentioning.
Ugh! It’s been a long time since I had such a tough record to describe! An acoustic take on these songs with no added drums or percussion of any kind? Well, then! The bulk of the melody is carried by Downes’ piano, while the combined forces of Wetton, Downes and singer Amy Clark get us a nice approximation of that famous grandeur of vocal multi-harmonies that are the trademark of either the Asia legacy or the Icon project. In the songs, Downes’ synthesizer holds up the background of the melody and gives them room to breathe, while the songs are kept grounded by his classical piano. Of course, the cello of Hugh McDowell, a former member of Electric Light Orchestra, who takes part in playing this material, adds a nice contrast to the music. Is that enough to make the thing convincing? The songs that have been dressed up acoustically have basically been stripped naked. Stripped to the point where this new look of theirs is distracting. They don’t actually lack much for a philharmonic orchestra to be able to play them in a full instrumental version. The best hint of that is the very likable instrumental intro to Soul Survivor. As it is, instead of pure orchestral arrangements, the record gives us Wetton and Downes, the guys we usually expect a lot from. We can forget about any reaction to a bigger injection of energy, one that might have released a molecule or two of adrenaline into the bloodstream. The acoustic guitar is practically undetectable. Even Wetton’s recognizable “golden” voice can’t make up for the instrumental, spectral deficit, in the sense that there’s a huge amount of unused space left in the arrangements. The rhythm is missing, even if it were just somebody banging a spoon on a pot lid in the background. Over the course of an hour, we’re accompanied by icy-cold yearning and sad lamenting for the days of past glory.
So “Acoustic TV Broadcast” is like lukewarm soup. Something’s missing from the songs! That something is at the very least a rhythm section!!! And alongside that, it’s not far off that you’ll very quickly start missing a special guest on guitar! Be it original Asia member Steve Howe (Yes), or any schooled enthusiast who could quickly “pick up” the riffs and solos of the originals. That would have brought liveliness, dynamics, and of course made “Acoustic TV Broadcast” an attractive, exciting record for the ears! Only that way would we have gotten a proper “unplugged” version of the originals, one worthy of being played. On top of that, they could have invited a small violin orchestra without any reservations and created the conditions for an excellent acoustic “live” record. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest move for Frontiers Records to grab the first chance when Wetton and Downes get together on stage, pardon, in the studio, to put together a private acoustic jam. Clearly they’re still strong enough to dictate terms to the label. So they put out the album their own way, which is of course a sign of absolute artistic freedom, but in this case it didn’t give birth to any particularly creative album and was even counterproductive.
With that, we can conclude that the album is interesting strictly for fans of John Wetton and Geoffrey Downes. I hope it’s just a warm-up, a run-through, a search for the slightly forgotten common language of the two authors, a revival of “rusty” material that Asia, now that it has reassembled in its original lineup, is supposed to play live again soon, like back in the eighties. I hate to be rude, but I’d suggest Wetton and Downes either record a new Icon or Asia record as soon as possible and stop bothering us with half-baked approaches, or else retire.
Lineup
John Wetton – vocals, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass guitar
Geoffrey Downes – piano
Hugh McDowell – cello
Amy Clark – vocals
Production
John Wetton & Geoffrey Downes
Tracklist
1.Heat Of The Moment
2.Voice Of America
3.Let Me Go
4.God Walks With Us
5.Sole Survivor
6.Meet Me At Midnight
7.The Smile Has Left Your Eyes
8.I Lay Down
9.Open Your Eyes
10.Only Time Will Tell
11.Don’t Cry
12.In The End
13.There In Your Bed (bonus track)
Album length: 56:19
