Artist: Howe, Steve
Label: Inside Out Records
Release: 2005
Rating: 3/5
With “Spectrum,” Steve Howe has added yet another new, musically wide-ranging solo album to his collection. His sons helped him out on the record again: Dylan on drums and Virgil on keyboards. Oliver Wakeman (keyboards) joined the lineup too, while Steve landed the hyperactive master of the “bass stick,” Tony Levin, on bass. It’s honestly hard to picture how Levin fits into so many bands at once. Bassist for Peter Gabriel, member of King Crimson, putting out his own studio material,… Come to think of it, Levin already played on the “quasi” Yes project Anderson/Bruford/Wakeman/Howe (1989), “yesman” Steve, Dylan and Virgil are family anyway, and Oliver is the son of another “yesman,” Rick Wakeman. All that’s missing is Jon Anderson, and you could say “Spectrum” is a special incarnation of Yes.
Joking aside! “Spectrum” is a collection of 15 short instrumentals steeped in the basic language of the guitar, which Howe, of course, commands in his own unique way. In them he once again explores different musical genres, provocatively testing how well they fit together, which is of course his trademark. Howe travels again from pure classical to jazz, and of course he doesn’t skip the proper “rocker” moves either. The record opens with the lively, quick-footed Tiger’s Den, which blends jazz and rock elements head-on and is topped off with some “slide” guitar. An even better example of the brilliance of Howe’s fusing is the following song, Labyrinth, which surprises with an opening in a baroque-Renaissance acoustic style, and then the sonic palettes start layering and stacking up almost spontaneously, until the song once again becomes an expressively unique Howe-style blend of jazz and rock that carries that familiar quality of a music giant. It’s a string of motif shifts in a fascinatingly unpredictable way. It’s incredible how Howe, like a skilled chess player, keeps leaving himself several options open as he strolls through his music, ready for a sudden, totally unpredictable “escape” into another musical “galaxy” (genre). And he does it all with wonderful sophistication. Ultra Definition is also an excellent fusion of many guitar tonalities, with Oliver Wakeman on keyboards keeping the special atmosphere. Howe opens Band Of Light with a dobro, and here you can feel a touch of country, while in Ragga Of Our Time he didn’t even forget the sitar, adding percussion in a Hindu ethno-folk element.
Truly! The album is dynamic, since Howe masterfully and deftly spins through unpredictable stylistic swerves in the songs the whole way. The guitarist has an exceptional, I’d even say innate, feel for this! You can see how armed with experience he is, because plenty of musicians would quickly lose the thread in this kind of genre-hopping gymnastics, which Steve Howe encodes so effectively through his own language of guitar-solo knot-tying. Of course, before I forget: Howe is once again surrounded by top-notch musicians, who each added their own dot on the “i.” Howe said he wanted to make an album that reflects his approach to life, combining natural energies, love and optimism. And he’s convincingly pulled that off again.
Being sophisticated in the progressive sense like Howe means stringing together delicate figures of multicolored motifs, as if you were imagining the fresh spring foliage of trees, still budding, curling gently toward the morning sun. “Spectrum” is easygoing, but it’s still an album with a strict “progressive” label. It’s a traditional Steve Howe record that is once again a little different from all the previous ones, and its big plus is also that Howe doesn’t open his mouth on it even once.
Lineup
Steve Howe – guitar
Oliver Wakeman – keyboards
Virgil Howe – keyboards
Tony Levin – bass guitar
Dylan Howe – drums
Production
Steve Howe
Tracklist
1. Tigers Den (3:46)
2. Labyrinth (3:57)
3. Band Of Light (3:34)
4. Ultra Definition (3:39)
5. Raga Of Our Time (4:12)
6. Ebb and Flow (4:03)
7. Realm Thirteen (4:27)
8. Without Doubt (3:45)
9. Highly Strung (4:30)
10. Hour Of Need (5:13)
11. Fools Gold (4:05)
12. Where Words Fail (4:16)
13. In The Skyway (3:13)
14. Livelihood (3:34)
15. Free Rein (3:52)
Album length: 60:06
