Lost/Forgotten Album #406

Who? Renaissance

Again? Well, the last one was posted over three years ago....

When? 1973

Album title? Ashes Are Burning

Allmusic.com review? Yes.

With electric guitarist Andy Powell sitting in on the title track, Renaissance delivered its best, and first fully formed album, mixing Russian, French, and Indian influences in musical settings that are both lively and elegant. The title track is one of the few lengthy progressive-rock pieces of the era that holds up, and the rest of the material runs the gamut from folk ("Carpet of the Sun") to Impressionist ("At the Harbor"), all of it hauntingly beautiful and enlivening.

Ashes Are Burning

1. Can You Understand
2. Let It Grow
3. On The Frontier
4. Carpet Of The Sun
5. At The Harbour
6. Ashes Are Burning

Availability: Around $12 new or used.

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Permalink Reply by RJhog (Admin) on July 28, 2018 at 7:26pm

I don't remember what I thought about the other one three years ago, but I certainly enjoyed this one today. It was perfect music for laying around and being lazy. And that worked really good today because I gimped up my leg earlier trying to act like a kid at AirStrike.

The entire album was nice, but that last track was stellar. The vocals and the lead guitar. Just marvelous.

Good work!

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Permalink Reply by Scott on July 30, 2018 at 3:23pm

Like the Chris Squire-ish bassline on the opener grabs my attention right away. Out of curiosity I revisited my comment from your previous Renaissance post. Bahahaha… I used descriptive language like “Up With People”, and also compared the singer with Judy Collins and Grace Slick. At first, I thought, what in the world was I thinking, and then she started singing again and yup, there it is! That strange hybrid of Collins sound and Slicks annunciations … Glad to know I was lucid.

This is happy prog! But in a close-knit hippie community concert sort of way. It feels like 1970 at a park in San Francisco and all the hippies are singing along. And let’s be transparent here, if I was 20 in 1970 at this park, I’d be in the circle no doubt! But alas, I missed out on this ‘genre’ and cultural experiment. I’m ok with that…

I’m glad they bookended with album with some decent tracks because the in-between songs are droners! They need to rock more…

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Permalink Reply by Yngve J. Chapleen on September 29, 2018 at 3:45pm

Catching up with some of the older posts and I'm in Prog Rock mood, so this'll do.

Know of the band, heard lots of their songs, even considered buying few of their releases, but on the end I settled for a Prog Rock compilation CD, where they were represented by "OCEAN GYPSY". Mighty great tune. I listen to the song quite a bit and consider, it to be the highlight of the CD.

This album strikes me quite acoustic. Not surprised, in fact, it's the way I imagined it will be. The only thing I would prefer otherwise is to have swirling keyboards, rather than prominent piano parts. However, Annie Haslam's voice is beautiful, like in anything I ever heard from her.