Artist: The Lens
Title: A Word in Your Eye
Label/ Date: GEP 2001

Tracks:

1. Sleep Until You Wake [7:11]

2. Choosing AFarmer (part 1) [8:10]

3. On Stephen's Castle Down [2:27]

4. Shafts of Light [2:52]

5. Childhood's End [5:51]

6. Frost and Fire [6:27]

7. Of Tide and Change [8:56]

8. From the Sublime [6:38]

9. Choosing A Farmer (part 3) [5:32]

The Review:

Take a look to the past? Sometimes it's nce to be able to re-do some old songs using the modern technology that wasn't available to us twenty-some years ago.

Enter The Lens, a pre-IQ band from the late 1970's and last heard from in 1981 prior to the formation of IQ. You can hear similar song structures along with a very familar one in, "Choosing a Farmer (part 3)", towards the end of the song you can hear the birth of IQ's "Wake" CD (the title escapes me, I'm sure Martin or Mike will let me know)..

The band comprises of multi-instrumentalists, Martin Orford and Mike Holmes (both of IQ) along with a fellow IQ man, Paul Cook on drums and saxophonist Tony Wright who guested on the last two IQ releases.

"A Word in Your Eye" is mostly instrumental although it does have one vocal piece "Childhood's End" (sorry guys) that just sticks too out of place like a sore thumb but I think the fans will forgive them.

The rest of the CD is amazing. Mike Holmes guitar playing is so much more prevalent here with some very different guitar sounds than I'm used to hearing from him in IQ (maybe it'll will make it onto the next IQ cd). And he is a pretty damn good bass player too as well as a keyboardist.

Martin's playing as always is such a treat as well and he's a fine singer as well. I like hearing more acoustic piano sounds from up more in the mix and those spacey synth sounds are so powerful especially the opening on "Sleep Until You Wake".

In closing, this is an excellent release for both IQ fans as well as instrumental fans. The Lens provides great music from great players, this time more in a spacey sound than the "neo" sound IQ is so famous for!

~Ron for ProgNaut.com [May 8th, 2002]

Band Members:

Michael Holmes - Guitar, Bass guitar, Keyoards

Martin Orford - Keyboards, Vocals, Flute

Plus:

Paul Cook - Drums

Tony Wright - Saxaphone