I do love a good progressive rock instrumental.
It’s a weirdly specific soft spot to have, maybe especially when you’re as fickle a prog fan as I am. I love ’70s Yes, bits and pieces of Genesis (Trick Of The Tail to Genesis), Pink Floyd (Wish You Were Here in particular) and Rush (Hemispheres to Signals), and adore Big Big Train… and I can mostly do without the rest. King Crimson leaves me cold, Asia is wretched, most third wave prog feels formulaic, and most prog-metal sounds like howling cats to me.
And then there’s the Alan Parsons Project. AP and crew did a fine job of straddling the line between prog excess and more focused songwriting, with a flair for hooks and a gift for—hallelujah, I’m finally getting to the point—instrumentals in particular.
All of this comes to mind when contemplating prog veteran Tim Morse’s newest album The Fourth Crossing. Morse knows the scene inside out—in addition to writing a terrific book about Yes (Yes Stories: Yes In Their Own Words), he played keys in Parallels, one of the best Yes tribute bands I’ve ever heard, and has had a fruitful solo career making music that calls back to and builds upon classic ’70s prog.
For his latest outing, Morse has decided to eschew words, and collaborations, for a genuine solo album that’s purely focused on keyboard textures and layered arrangements, with a sort of “Parsons and Wakeman meet Vangelis and Tangerine Dream” vibe to it that works remarkably well. This is mood music in the truest sense; music to sink into and drift along with as it shifts from mood to mood, moment by moment.
Opener “Submerged” has a rather ambient, soothing feel, a touch of Vangelis, a hint of Dark Side-era Floyd in its looming synth washes interrupted by mysterious melody lines. “Vibration” leads with Wakemanesque fanfare, then a pushing rhythm and sunny melody. “Assembly Line” is where the Parsons influence first asserts itself, a dark, lively and rather ominous number with an almost funk undercurrent.
“Dreamcatcher” opens with alarms bleeding into moody electric piano repeating a hypnotic pattern; in time, fresh and even odder elements intrude. By contrast, “Hieroglyphics” is bright and sunny, with nice dancing Moog lead. Parsons comes to mind again, and Supertramp as well, when the swirling “Eternal” arrives with both classical and pop overtones, including synth strings and harpsichord.
The wonkiest number here, “Confusion In Aisle 14” delivers fusion-y math rock that lands somewhere between playful and eerie, moving later into a moody electric piano section with jazzy undertones, capped by a Floydian synth solo. “Structure” follows with what feels like a somewhat spooky deconstruction of the Parsons sophisticated pop feel, before Morse delves into spacy ambient for the title track, decorated with bright synths and a breathy female voice speaking Japanese, because, why not?
In the late going, “Zephyr” has a dreamy quality before Morse shifts gears into a pulsing prog-poppish segment that could pass for a lost cut from Parsons’ Pyramid album. “Space Station Lounge” suits the penultimate track beautifully as a title, a moody, rather foreboding number that feels both otherworldly and rather hypnotic. Closer “The Celestial Cathedral” finds Morse deploying the church organ tone from Yes’s Going For The One on a swirling, classically influenced, restrained but unmistakably Wakeman-esque number.
The Fourth Crossing does what all the most engaging prog instrumentals do: it paints a picture without words, sweeping you up in its immersive sound and shifting moods. Tim Morse has crafted a melodic dreamscape that’s alternately bright and dark, serious and playful, and never less than engaging.