Empire Records

Empire was originally intended to be a new line-up of Flash. The nucleus of the band were guitarist Peter Banks and singer Sydney Foxx. The band never got a record deal and cd's were released in 1995-1996 by One Way Records. The music was recorded in the seventies. Recorded in 1974, this has a few fillers, and it occasionally falls into the prog habit of going six minutes when four would do, but it's still mystifying that this perfectly solid collection would go missing for so long. Empire's sound bridges the West Coast funk of Cold Blood and the jazzy guitar of early Yes, and it works surprisingly well. The charging "Out of Our Hands" has some clever guitar effects thrown in, and a startling moment where Foxx's vocals rise up like a kettle on the boil.

Empire is an obscure early '90's progressive rock band from Italy, that featured the duo formation Syndone (drummer Sburlati and keyboard player Rogani) and female singer Rosanna De Luca. They release so far a single album in 1994 at Vinyl Magic named Back to Knowledge. They taken their influences from legendary ELP, the keyboards are sometimes one at one with the british, but always keeping the sound modern, that save them from bing a total clone band. Most of the nine compositions sound fluen and modern with varied keyboards that contain obvious hints from Eddie Jobson and Keith Emerson. If you like bands ELP, Monolith, Cairo, and those who are more in driven keyboards arrangements this is a good listen.