Flight - 1976 - Incredible Journey

Flight

1976

Incredible Journey

01. Music Is

02. 1929

03. First Impression

04. Mystery Man

05. 2003

06. Visions Of A Dream

07. The Sands Of Time

08. Rock 'N' Roll Star

Acoustic Bass, Electric Bass – John Ray 

Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar – Ted Karczewski

Brass, Lead Vocals – Pat Vidas

Drums, Percussion – Russell A. Dawber, Jr.

Keyboards – Jim Michael "Fizzwah" Yaeger

Recorded at Media Sound Studio, New York

Yeah, I can see where this would turn off plenty of listeners, particularly those like an underground fan such as myself. Don't ask me to explain how I like this, but I do. It surely has all of the elements of commercial, mid-70's US prog that really were turning off those not in the mainstream back then. In fact, I'm not sure if I can think of a more stereotypical example of the genre, from the cascading tom-tom drumming, synthesizers and ultra-high production quotient. And just to top it off, most of these tracks have utterly insipid lyrics. Thankfully, I'm not a lyric guy, and can quite easily tune them out and concentrate on the music. The musicianship on here is superb, particularly the lead guitar. When this guy solos, he scorches! But for the most part, no individual instrument is spotlighted. After all, this is rather fast moving, symphonic sounding prog, and everyone adds to the finished product fairly equally. I guess you could say there are also some fusion elements in the mix, but this is not what I generally consider fusion, based mostly on their selection of material. Overall, very consistent. Based on this one, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for their first as well.

''Incredible journey'' (1976, Capitol) has this amazing, multi-colored, almost chaotic front cover, which tells a lot about the contained material.In this album Flight sound like Starcastle gone mad, taking a turn into Return to Forever/Santana-like territories.It has that US Pomp Prog feeling with the glam synthesizer flashes, poppy vocals and some of Yes' unbelievable ability to create ultra-complex, very dense instrumental music, then it passes through fast and furious jazzy patterns with technical interplays and solos and abnormal rhythm changes.They were pioneers in making something difficult sound listenable and that's exactly what's going on in ''Incredible journey''.Powerful trumpets, in-your-face synth lines, Fusion-esque electric piano, a cool guitarist with a flawless style, going from jazzy moves to almost Hard Rock-in leads, even some Mellotron/harpsichord echoes in a few tracks.The result is not absolutely on par with the debut, the main reason being the not so memorable hooks all the way through.Still a fascinating mix of pompous orchestrations and jazzy orgasms and definitely very far from a run-of-the-mill album.

Florida based Flight's second album is a super tight and intense fusion like Return to Forever.... mixed with AOR Midwest styled 1970s FM pomp like Styx or Starcastle. Just the most bizarre blend of contrasting styles one can imagine. As if the band were made fun of for being musical wizards, so in order to be cool they put out crowd pleasing rock music. WTH? I like it in any case. One of a kind that's for sure.