Back in the 1980’s Peter Matuchniak was part of the neo-progressive rock movement with Janysium and Mach One, before taking a break from the scene. He recently started making music again and has released albums with Gekko Projekt and Evolve IV while this is his debut solo album. One of the names I recognized from the band list was that of drummer Jimmy Keegan who replaced Nick D’Virgilio in Spock’s Beard (as well as playing with Santana etc). This is an album of countless styles, yet they are all brought together by Peter’s strong guitar work. There is a liberal use of sax which adds greatly to overall proceedings, and singers Natalie Azerad and Ted Zahn do a great job. While playing this I was trying to think what it reminded me of and it took a long time before I realized that in many ways this encompasses much of what Jeremy Morris delivers, except while Jeremy usually has just one style an album Peter goes from acoustic to psychedelic to ‘classic’ to prog to jazz to whatever he likes all in the one place. But, far from feeling disjointed this is very much a complete piece of work.
On the rear of the digipak Peter classifies this as “Adult Contemporary Rock (Progressive/Jazz/ Folk)” and who am I to disagree? This is an album that can be enjoyed on first hearing, but the more that it is played the more the listener gets from it as there is something here that draws you in, whether it is the calm and warm brass or the soaring Floyd-esque vocals. This is a mature album that fans of good music, whatever the genre, will find indispensible.
www.progrockrecords.com
