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Old 09-23-2009, 04:21 PM   #9 (permalink)
jackhammer
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Join Date: May 2007
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Now I have had the chance to listen to it fully I have to say that I'm dissapointed. my first bugbear is the production. One thing about PT over the last 10 years is the brilliant production on the albums. Steven Wilson personally produces the 5.1 soundstages of the most recent albums so I KNOW he has an ear for production but The Incident has a lacklustre sound that's a little muddy in places and doesn't bite you on the ass. There is a 5.1 version out there on a deluxve version that may well enhance the album but as I don't have access to that I can only comment on the standard mix.

The first disc is a 55 minute piece of continous music that is linked lyrically but musically it really is a case of many tracks bolted together with no overall cohesion. Of course there are certain motifs that appear throughout but there is not enough of them and they are not incorporated well enough to give us a genuine 55 minute piece of music. There are standouts of course and some awesome sections of music such as the 11 minute Time Flies and Drawing The Line is instantly likeable but it just has something missing. Maybe I was hoping for more of a stretch musically considering Wilson's obvious musical talent.

On the flipside, the second disc of 4 songs wrote by the whole band and not solely Wilson himself is fantastic and it's such a shame that we only get 20 mins worth of music. There is variation in the tracks and Bonnie The Cat (terrible title aside) is one of the best PT tracks I have heard.

In summary I don't think it's terrible at all and I do like it but it's less than the sum of it's parts and a let down musically regarding their progressive sound.
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