Arriving a mere four months after Spirit Of Yellow, Coming Of The Unicorn is a full-on journey to the outer reaches of the cosmos, on the back of a horned horse. The title is, one suspects and indeed hopes, ironic in the best progtastic sense!
The line-up has shifted, as is the wont of this amorphous collective. Gone is David Hendry, replaced on keyboards by Steve Ellis, and joining Terri-B on vocals is Maxine Marten. Drums on this album are by Paddi, back after the Dragonian Days album, and he shares the drum stool with Dave Pipkin. Multi-instrumentalist Kevin Hodge is replaced on bass, mostly by John Simms. Also present is Michael Steadman contributing keyboards and programming and Kingsley Burn on bass on Miracle. Confused? Yep, that's the way with this merry band of musical travelers.
Something That Affects All People commences proceedings with a statement of intent. We have caught the solar wind in our starsails and we are drifting far, far away from gravity's pull, arriving at a floating reggae tent somewhere on an obscure tendril of the Orion Nebula, Only Time Will Tell, as they say. It's time to turn on and chill out people, chords of marvellous space guitar woozily meander through the heady mix as the band stretch out with the very Hillage-like As Within So Without. While undoubtedly Kosmische, the sharp acid guitar of maestro John Simms give things an edge of clarity, bringing it all into focus.
Kraftwerk-like sequencers bubble through the title track, accompanied by a disembodied voice announcing the coming of the horned horse (heheh), with John and Tim's fabulous, lyrical twin guitar taking the song over the bridge and away.
The centrepiece of the album is the eight minute ride through the birth of a galaxy that is Stars, which includes a re-working of their spacerock minor classic My God It's Full Of Stars. John (presumably?) gets to make his guitar sound like a souped-up sitar as he "glids" forever, the tune spinning on an unseen axis. It is all quite mesmerising. John Simms' marvellous acid-dropped guitar is all over this album, as you've probably guessed, and on Crystal Spheres Of Light he takes us back to Steve Hillage and the land of Green, and a lovely trip it is too.
(Reviewed by Roger Trenwith - Dutch Progressive Rock Page - (www.dprp.net)