4.5 out of 5 Stars!

After this German band released the terrific Remember The Future album in 1973, the follow-up release in 1974 (the brass-riddled, circus-concept album Down To Earth) was rather a disappointment. Thankfully, the band bounced back almost immediately with the excellent Recycled, one of its most keyboard-rich, ultra-Progressive albums, which subsequently became one of my favorite Nektar releases of all time (probably second only to Remember The Future).

On Recycled, Side A (Part One) is absolutely stunning, with each short track flawlessly linked into one continuous suite of music, a glorious seventeen-plus-minute affair of sheer Prog-Rock beauty. Side B (Part 2), however, contains four non-linked songs, with two of them (“Marvellous Moses” and “It’s All Over”) being two of my favorites within Nektar’s entire catalogue of material, with the latter song, a ballad, containing verses that have probably the most delicious vocal melody lines and chord patterns Nektar ever put together.

Unfortunately, this was probably the last truly great Nektar album also, although no subsequent album was actually horrible, merely inconsistent when it came to quality and songwriting, and some of the band’s more recent releases (2004’s Evolution, 2008’s Book of Days, and 2013’s Time Machine) were rather enjoyable, just not quite up to the same lofty standards set by Recycled or Remember The Future. Regardless, I have them all, and continue to enjoy most of them on a regular basis.

Finally, RIP to Roye Albrighton, guitarist extraordinaire, who passed away in 2016, a year ago this very week, in fact. So sad…

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