From the vault: Cosmograf - When Age Has Done Its Duty


COSMOGRAF
When Age Has Done Its Duty
(FESTIVAL MUSIC 201107 / BERTUS)

When Age Has Done Its Duty is already the thirth concept album of Robin Armstrong with Cosmograf. This time it is about the ordeal of the aging process, looking back on (family) live and dying. Armstrong is assisted by Bob Dalton (It Bites), Steve Thorne, Lee Abraham, Simon Rogers and Steve Dunn (both of Also Eden), Luke Machin (The Tangent), Huw Lloyd-jones (Unto Us) and Dave Ware. The sound produced by the gentlemen is rooted in the progressive rock of the seventies with trips to neo-prog, hard rock and metal with references to Genesis in On Which We Stand and Savatage in opener Into This World. When Age Has Done Its Duty is an album you can’t judge on a first listen. It needs several listening sessions to fathom the album, since Armstrong hasn’t walked the easiest way lyrically and musically. Maybe this is because of the attachements of sounds and confounding factors, which attracks you from the music at a first listening. But the often you hear it, the better you can place them against the songs. And of course they are put there on purpose. Besides the earlier mentioned songs Balcksmith’s Hammer is a storytellers ballad in Pendragon style about life and death of a blacksmith. The intro Bakelite Switch is filled with the earlier mentioned sounds and sounds, despite of yje electronic force and acoustic coplets, quite monotonous. Although it works well as an encore at concerts. One of the highlights is Memory Lost with the vocal assistments of Hew Lloyd-Jones, which refers a lot to King Crimson. Also the titletrack, with thirteen minutes the longest song, is a highlight.  Sung by Steve Thorne it brings all together. It opens with keyboards and a spoken poem, followed by coplets in Genesis style. After an acoustic intermezzo in Steve Howe style it works towards a Floydian outro with Gilmour alike guitarsolo. White Lights Awaits refers much more to the new wave and synthpop styles due to a large use of synthesizers, although the Frip alike guitarparts sounds very Discipline like. The ballad Dog On The Clee – a personnal memory – is the album closer. Armstrong delivers a growing diamond, which will lay Festival Records, just like the album of Sean Filkens, certainly no harm.
 
tracklist:
 
Into The World
Blacksmith's Hammer
On Which We Stand
Bakelite Switch
Memory Lost
When Age Has Done Its Duty
White light Awaits
Dog On The Clee

Notes:
* This review comes from 2011 and was first published in iO Pages

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