This is a reissue of the classic A Tab in the Ocean album from Nektar. The difference here is a second disc is included, “The Boston Tapes.” These recordings were made very early in Nektar’s career, basically as demos. As such the sound quality isn’t up to the best standards and the music is closer to psychedelia than the sound Nektar came to play later. Still, the disc is intriguing and entertaining and well worth having. It should be noted that I’ve already reviewed A Tab in the Ocean previously, and since the first disc here is the same as that, I’m reprinting those track by track reviews for consistency.

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2011  Volume 3 at lulu.com/strangesound.

Ambient tones start this, and organ eventually enters to gradually begin building the piece up. After a time, the entire band joins in, creating a powerful and triumphant sounding progressive rock movement. They play with this for a while, then drop it to a very dramatic segment based mostly on the rhythm section. The group works through this new segment for a time, and it eventually resolves out to a balladic prog section that feels a lot like Pink Floyd meets the Beatles. This forms the structure of the verses. As they move this forward it eventually gains a new intensity through a more pronounced rhythm section, the group eventually explodes this out for a short time in prog fury, then they drop it back to more Floydian texture. They bring this back up to the rhythmic fury dominated segment continuing through this then creating another highly dramatic segment. This gives way to amore catchy chorus section that is punctuated by some solid jamming. After this plays through, they move to another verse segment. This explodes out into more frantic prog jamming that is trademark Nektar. This dynamic jam keeps growing and changing. It gets rather tough to keep track of all the changes, but suffice it to say that this one is a prog extravaganza. At nearly 17 minutes, this epic is just awesome!

Coming in with hard edged prog jamming, this drops to another segment that calls to mine early Pink Floyd. This also has a laid back jazzy texture that feels a bit like some of the sounds from the first Yes album. They eventually change this up to another fast paced excursion that's all Nektar. This moves toward a resolution section that again has their trademarks all over it before returning to the Floyd/protoYes segment for the next verse. This continues to evolve forward by working and reworking these various segments as it carries on. A slow half-space rock/half-jazzy segment emerges later, and eventually carries this straight into the next track.