STEVE HACKETT - Beyond The Shrouded Horizon - album thread

    • Official Post

    Yesterday was the 11th release anniversary of Steve Hackett's album "Beyond The Shrouded Horizon". Someone said to me recently: "his last great solo album".

    What are your thoughts? I listened to this yesterday again and there are indeed some fine moments (A Place Called Freedom, The Phoenix Flown) and all in all it sounds good and the tracks are all quite good.


    This is our review from 2011


    https://www.genesis-news.com/c…rizon-CD-review-s440.html

  • Exactly how I feel about it. Even the bonus disc is better than his more recent stuff. Both are full of variation in a way none since have been. A shame, but chart success seems to have made him get stuck in a rut.

    Ian


    Putting the old-fashioned Staffordshire plate in the dishwasher!

    • Official Post

    Released 12 Years ago today …

    Still one of my favorite Hackett albums


    our review

    https://www.genesis-news.com/c…rizon-CD-review-s440.html

  • In retrospect, I don't consider HORIZON to be Steve's "last great solo album," but think of it more as being the first of his "not-so-great" ones -- not terrible by any means, but in roughly the same category as the albums that followed it.


    Random thoughts (some of which I've said here before):


    - There's an odd gimmick, on this album only, wherein 2 consecutive tracks basically sound like one longer song -- i.e., "Loch Lomond"/"The Phoenix Flown," "Wanderlust"/"Til These Eyes", "Prairie Angel"/"A Place Called Freedom," etc.


    - "A Place Called Freedom" (in combination with its aforementioned intro) is, IMO, the album's best song.


    - "Catwalk" has a serious "chorus problem." It's like Steve literally didn't know what to do between the verses.


    - I always considered "Turn This Island Earth" to be pretty much a mess. When I made a CDR copy of the album for car listening, I put this track at the beginning so as to basically "get it out of the way" first.


    (Bonus disc:)


    - "Four Winds: East" (which, as has been discussed here before, is basically a rip-off of an old Peter Green composition) is identically the same track as the Japan-only bonus track from DARKTOWN "The Well at the World's End," except that the beginning and end have been trimmed a little. To avoid redundancy I left this off of my CDR copy of the album. Fortunately, "South" happens to flow nicely into "West."


    - The classical piece "Pieds En L'Air" is not only not a Steve original, but he doesn't even play on it.


    - "Enter the Night" is the third incarnation of the tune previously known as "Depth Charge" and "Riding the Colossus." IMO it manages to be one of Steve's best attempts at writing a straight pop song.

    Little known fact: Before the crowbar was invented...


    ...crows simply drank at home.

    Edited 2 times, last by DecomposingMan ().