Elegant Simplicity

'Moments Of Clarity'

Tracklist: Moments of Clarity , A life Alone , A Cradle of Stars , Afraid to Wake , Out of Reach , Love, Loss & Desire , Nature and Man .

If you look on the web site of Elegant Simplicity it states: If you like the music of Barclay James Harvest, Camel, Caravan, Fruupp, Gentle Giant, I.Q., Jethro Tull, Pendragon, PFM, Pink Floyd, Spock's Beard, etc, you'll love Elegant Simplicity!

But one thing they do however leave out in this statement is Mike Oldfield. I wonder why? As he does seem to be a predominate influence here.

Well as I love or at least like all of these bands Elegant Simplicities latest release should have been right up my street.

Elegant Simplicity is really the workings of just one man, Steven McCabe, a multi instrumentalist. On this release aided, vocal wise, by Ken Senior. Steven has been recording under this name for over a decade and Moments of Clarity is his 4th CD release.

The music is a rather laid back mixture of Oldfield meets Camel with a touch of latter-day Pink Floyd.

It cannot be truly compared to the bands listed (top) as it is lacking the ideas/ writing power and quality control that would have been brought to bear with inter band ideas exchange and an outside producer.

But the thing I find most annoying about this release is the constant use of a programmed drum machine.

Moments of Clarity is pleasant enough and after a hard day at the office quite relaxing. The most interesting thing about the album is the guitar work; very Latimer combined with the "heavily distorted" Oldfield sound. Other than the drum machine, the worst things; the dreary vocals and the sub Mark Kelly keyboard runs.

However, Steven must be congratulated for actually putting in the time and money to self-produce the whole thing.

The joy of modern technology is that anyone with a talent can cheaply produce their own home albums and Steven is very talented. Moments of Clarity as a home produced album is very good. However as a full commercial release it is somewhat lacking.

What I would really like to see is a real band to form around Steven so we can see what he is really capable of.

Ian Oakley February 2000