A Reminiscent Drive – Ambrosia

Great album, quite different to earlier material with more vocals.

Jay Alanski was always a Pop musician after all: his first output as A Reminiscent Drive wasn't entirely about soothing keyboard drones of the blissful kind, as people seemingly re it by now: it had plenty of overly dramatic-sounding ages matched with some slightly experimental sampling and time signatures altogether; even the electric guitar solos by collaborator JF Kellner were of an avant garde nature (strangely reminiscent of the electronic squeals by Ler LaLonde from Primus' best years for a silly example). Yet obvious highlights of the album are what one could consider meditation music; it was recorded in a garden anyways.

It would be unfair to claim Ambrosia shares any major common ground with Mercy Street, then: Alanski gets to sing actual tunes -again, you could say-, music gets a way more discernible electronic feel (artist went from a "no computer on this record!" to a "this record was made with computers!") and the overly experimental dramatic numbers are mostly gone, yet the musical sensibilities within really moving melodies remains Alansky's own touch all throughout the record. Just listen to the title track, "Tears Along the Way" or the wonderful closer "Smokey Mountains" and try to remain untouched in some way. I'm always coming back to these, they're just beautiful.

Rest of the album still has plenty of surprises, too: jazzy house (yes, a la St. Germain) on "The Unseen World", some kind of bizarre speedy techno on "Silence In Heaven", nostalgic shapeless ballad in "Satellites." Its indeed not the kind of zen-inducing meditation music you'd (somehow) expect from this moniker, but its definitely a more musically varied extension of what Mr. Drive was able to do back in the day and you'd be surprised at how much you get to enjoy its disparate moments.
One still wishes Jay would fully get back to music...