The Enid
In The Region Of The Summer Stars

Not every album (and CD) turns out perfectly, and In the Region of the Summer Stars is a striking example. It’s enough to consider that during the listening, we repeatedly found ourselves longing for the good old—and much maligned—Ekseption...

The Enid is a project created by Robert John Godfrey, a former classical pianist who decided to try his luck in rock music. After a relatively long stint (since 1969) with Barclay James Harvest and an album released under his own name (Fall Of Hyperion, inspired by Keats' poetry), he joined forces with guitarists Stephen Stewart and Francis Lickerish, founding The Enid. The group—sometimes a quintet, sometimes a quartet—seemed to have a bright future from the start: it had numerous admirers; first among them was Tony Stratton-Smith, owner of the legendary label Charisma.

The eccentric Godfrey was keen to point out right from the start that The Enid was not a progressive group, yet he had no qualms about using magazines and fanzines dedicated to the genre to advertise his project. The buzz was quite substantial; and in our opinion, undeserved. We have nothing against instrumental music (we have already mentioned Ekseption), but we believe that The Enid adds nothing to prog rock, nor to the universe of sounds in general.

Their output is difficult to classify. We had read that it is a "fusion of rock and classical," but in our view, it's just neoclassical. In the Region of the Summer Stars, the band's much-acclaimed debut album ("a great rediscovery!"... "it grows with every listen!"...), was reissued with the addition of no less than six tracks; and this is the edition we possess. Our verdict: it doesn’t grow by even a jot! We put all our best intentions into it (encouraged by a friend who clearly idolizes this band), but to no avail. The listening experience remains lackluster even after the second and third time.

But let’s dive into the album's analysis—which, as a reminder, is considered among The Enid's best: "The Fool," "The Tower of Babel," and "The Reaper" already immerse us in an insubstantial atmosphere, with surprising glimpses of New Trolls' Concerto Grosso (true masters of fusion!) and even to the Morricone-evoking Once Upon a Time in the West. Hear it to believe it. "The Loved Ones," the fourth groove, is a melodrama for piano and orchestra that absolutely fails to evoke the slightest emotion.

And by this point, at the latest, we suspect we are listening to film scores.

A first break through the clouds is "The Demon King", a lively, rhapsodic piece with interesting intentional discordances. However, with the next track—the sixth: "Pre-Dawn"—we fall back into New Age for the simple-minded. The presumptuous grandesse of "Sunrise" is both frightening and infuriating. And "The Last Day", track no. 8, deserves a separate discussion. "The Last Day" begins like a parody of Ravel's Bolero that then transforms into a parody of Stravinsky's Peter and the Wolf and flows into a pompous quasi-symphony (God Save The Queen!) before gently thinning into a sort of Afternoon of a Faun. It is certainly one of the most varied compositions on the album, but it doesn’t convince exactly due to its purely imitative nature.
The brief interlude "The Flood" is followed by "Under the Summer Stars", a pastiche featuring just about everything: from recorder to acid guitar, yet again with the grating grand orchestral effect in full swing.
Without a hint of compositional creativity, track 12: "Judgement". But it leaves room for the absolute best track (alongside "The Demon King"), namely "In The Region Of The Summer Stars", which lends its title to the opus. The second and last ray of sunshine piercing through a mostly bleak curtain.

Conclusively: give this album to those who mock the legendary Ekseption and claim they are not part of the great prog rock family! You'll see them change their minds.