Martin Orford
Giant Electric
Pea
Web: http://www.gep.co.uk
Martin Orford
is best known for his 26-year career as keyboardist and main songwriter with
legendary progressive rock band IQ, though he was also a significant player for
many years in Jadis and also the John Wetton band. He released his first solo
album "Classical Music and Popular Songs" to critical acclaim in
September 2000.
Martin left IQ
in the autumn of 2007 to work on solo material, and "The Old Road" is
the culmination of this project.
The album
features an all-star line-up including John Wetton (Asia), Nick D'Virgilio and
Dave Meros (Spock's Beard), John Mitchell (It Bites/ Arena), Dave Oberlê
(Gryphon), Gary Chandler (Jadis) and Steve Thorne.
Martin
describes the album as "unashamedly retro and proud of it", and the
overall theme of the CD reflects a celebration of traditional ways and a
rejection of the less attractive aspects of the 21st century. The Old Road is
an interesting “Prog Rock album” which embodies a certain vision of music which
has sadly been long left behind. It has so many musical resonances from early
Genesis to the “Voyage of the Acolyte”, I always loved Prog Rock and this is a
great experience.
It is certainly
an exploration of the early Progressive sound and has is a utterly superb retro
experience, at the same time it not just going over the same territory and has
been placed within a modern “musical” context and shows a lot of innovation and
unique talent in its own right. It is certainly not derivative.
Orford has
advised he is withdrawing from the music industry in reaction to the internet
and the modern free music culture. It will be our loss considering the beauty
of this album.