I’ll add a review from Progblog here
Reference my earlier post on audio quality and sitting with the composer listening to his work via Roon.
Are We There Yet?
Gary Bennett is the bassist with Steve Hackett-approved full-blown symphonic prog band Yak (Journey of the Yak, 2008, Quest for the Stones, 2015); bassist/guitarist/keyboards player with Oktober (Sandcastles, 2015) alongside Yak drummer David Speight and the vocalist Molnár Kinga; and collaborator with bespoke hi-fi manufacturers Rega.
Sandcastles is difficult to pigeonhole, though prog and folk influences do shine through. It’s well-crafted, intelligent pop-rock along the lines of Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin, able to reach a wide audience that naturally includes anyone into prog.
Bennett has just put out a 24 minute-long instrumental track Are We There Yet? that he’s been working on for some time, playing all instruments apart from bodhran (provided by Fez Powell, who also contributed to Sandcastles); an earlier version was posted on YouTube at the end of 2018. There’s no doubt that Are We There Yet? is more proggy than Sandcastles, something that has the feel of an early 70s epic, carefully built up in layers and employing the appropriate choice of instrumentation. Sandcastles features tracks with what I’d describe as Mike Oldfield-like guitar which adds to the prog feel; Are We There Yet? also includes the same clean, compressed and EQ’d guitar sound but there’s so much more going on. The electric piano (a Hohner Pianet T carefully renovated with the help of staff at Rega) used in the introduction and conclusion adds to the 70’s vibe, as electric piano seems to have fallen out of favour from the current scene.
The track consists of four themes which appear throughout the piece, but I think you can subdivide the composition into four roughly equal-length sections; part one has the electric piano intro followed by a development built up from symphonic choral keyboards, through acoustic guitar melodies over keyboard chord patterns that seamlessly introduce electric guitar; part two is more reflective, slower paced and less dense but still highly melodic; a child’s voice asking ‘are we there yet?’ marks the transition to part three, which has a pleasant bucolic atmosphere featuring acoustic guitar and percussion; part four begins with some Canterbury-like electric piano and the pace alternately hastens and slows as the different themes surface.
I imagine this would appeal to fans of Camel, Gordon Giltrap, Steve Hackett, Jon and Vangelis or Mike Oldfield. It’s a very satisfying piece of music - I really like it.
You can listen to it here https://youtu.be/jdyWj2id41s #progressiverock #progrock #prog #symphonicprog Oktober