Mnnqns Full Circle Back

1994's Full Circle and 1997's Let the Piano Play combined on one CD!

Though he's skirted around in various genres, for Full Circle, as the title suggests, David Benoit returns to where he started: contemporary jazz. With the same set of musicians in the same studio as the ones who were used on the 1985 release This Side Up, Benoit plays his piano expertly through all ten tracks on the album (and only one, "Aqua de Beber," by Jobim and de Moraes, is a cover). It is, in short, smooth jazz at its finest, which means a lot of horns, a happily funky bass, pretty breaks, and a whole lot of production.

Full Circle marks the Dregs' return to the recording studio after an absence of over a decade. The 1994 release also reunites the band with its original label, Capricorn Records. In fact, the music on Full Circle is pretty typical of the band's earlier Capricorn releases, with a few straight-ahead rockers (including the opener, "Aftershock"), a Texas swing tune ("Goin' to Town"), a semi-classical time signature shifter ("Pompous Signature"), a Baroque-ish guitar piece ("Yeolde"), and plenty of excellent musicianship throughout.

Saga are a Canadian rock band, formed in Oakville, Ontario. Jim Crichton and Welsh-born vocalist Michael Sadler have been the principal songwriters for Saga. Ian Crichton is the band's guitarist; apart from his work with Saga, he has recorded several solo albums as well as sessions with Asia. Full Circle is a studio album by Saga, their thirteenth album of new material. This recording marks the begin of the second round of Chapters. Three of the songs, "Remember When (Chapter 9)", "Uncle Albert's Eyes (Chapter 13)" and "Not This Way (Chapter 10)," were part of a second series of eight songs that Saga included within some of their albums called "The Chapters," which told the story of a young Albert Einstein. These songs were also later included on The Chapters LIVE, an album that the band recorded in 2005. To date, there's been no official compilation of the chapters in their studio incarnation.