Gryphon - Raindance (2010)

The group's fourth album is more electronic than folk, and, indeed, the electronics are dominated by Richard Harvey's electronic keyboards. The lineup here is Harvey (keyboards, krumhorns, recorders), Graeme Taylor (guitars, backing vocals), Brian Gulland (bassoon, backing vocals), Malcolm Bennett (bass, flute), and David Oberle (drums, vocals). The sound is surprisingly new age-ish, especially the title track, which, like most of this album, seems rather cold and mechanical. The exceptions are a cover of the Beatles' "Mother Nature's Son," which doesn't seem to have much point or purpose in these surroundings, and Graeme Taylor's aimless, folkish "Fontinental Version" and insultingly slight throwaway rock number "Don't Say Go." Most of the rest is hardly memorable, especially the meandering keyboard instrumental "Wallbanger," which sounds like a leftover from the Red Queen to Gryphon Three album, which does, indeed, date from a year earlier than most of the rest of this. A 16-minute instrumental called "(Ein Klein) Heldenleben" is better than anything else here, a bracing and exciting piece of music whose pyrotechnics seem to reflect the group's contact with Yes as an opening act on the latter's tour, but all in all hardly a track to justify this album -- everything it has to say that was special to Gryphon was said better on the Red Queen album, although anyone who absolutely needs more of what was there could do worse than purchasing this disc, at least for this and "Wallbanger."