A unique deluxe box edition of prog legends Nektar most critically acclaimed album Remember The Future. Comes with a bonus disc of the famous Chipping Norton Studios session recorded live on March 27, 1974. Among Nektar fans, there are many who consider Remember the Future to be the band's creative peak. The album certainly creates the grounds for making that argument. Indeed, it is an ambitious work that is essentially one composition divided into two parts. The whole is performed in a very seamless and competent manner. Still, many critics just plain didn't get it. The juxtaposition of the two opinions makes this album to Nektar much like what Tales From Topographic Oceans was to Yes…
This 50th Anniversary edition comprises 4 CDs and a multi-region Blu Ray disc and features a newly remastered original stereo mix of the album along with and additional two CDs featuring a previously unreleased concert recorded at the Stadthalle, Munster, Germany in January 1974 and stunning new 5.1 Surround Sound and Stereo mixes of the album from the original multi track tapes. Also included on the Blu ray disc are the original 1973 Quad mix and additional video content comprising of the rare 'Remember the Future' promotional film, the film of 'Wings' shown on BBC TVs Old Grey Whistle Test and a live performance of 'Desolation Valley / Waves' for the same TV show.
Among Nektar fans, there are many who consider Remember the Future to be the band's creative peak. The album certainly creates the grounds for making that argument. Indeed, it is an ambitious work that is essentially one composition divided into two parts. The whole is performed in a very seamless and competent manner. Still, many critics just plain didn't get it. The juxtaposition of the two opinions makes this album to Nektar much like what Tales From Topographic Oceans was to Yes. The truth is probably somewhere between the two points, as it usually is. It truly is a very entertaining, well-written, and well-performed disc that showcases a very underrated band at the top of their game.
Remember the Future is the fourth album from English progressive rock band Nektar. Much like their debut album Journey to the Centre of the Eye, it is a concept album which is formally divided into ten tracks but in fact consists of one continuous piece of music. Nektar's U.S. release, Remember the Future (1973), propelled the band briefly into mass popularity. A concept album revisiting Journey to the Centre of the Eye's theme of extraterrestrials granting a human enlightenment, but with a blind boy as the protagonist. It demonstrated a much more melodic sound than previous albums and shot into the Top 20 album charts in the U.S..
Nektar's debut album was one of their finest releases, saturated with abstract psychedelia and a wonderful science-fiction motif that is magnified through the rigorous but dazzling Mellotron of Allan Freeman and Roye Albrighton's nomadic guitar playing. Throughout Journey's 13 cuts, Nektar introduced their own sort of instrumental surrealism that radiated from both the vocals and from the intermingling of the haphazard drum and string work. With the synthesizer churning and boiling in front of Howden's percussive attack and Mick Brockett's "liquid lights," tracks like "Astronaut's Nightmare," "It's All in the Mind," and both "Dream Nebula" cuts teeter back and forth from mind-numbing, laid-back melodies to excitable, open-ended excursions of fantastical progressive rock…
Depending on who you ask, this is either Nektar's greatest or worst album. As Albrighton explained later, it was the band's attempt to re-invent itself as someone else – like the Magical Mystery Tour. Old fans were appalled; but as the first album to get much airplay in the U.S., it brought in new fans who found it by far their most accessible work. Its progressive and funk elements are set around a demented circus theme, with the songs introduced by a loony Teutonic ringmaster. "That's Life," powered by chattering drums and a positively orgasmic Rickenbacker bass sound, is a standout of progressive rock showmanship. Delicate pieces like "Little Boy" and "Early Morning Clown" – where Albrighton uses rotating Leslie speakers to great effect – alternate with pub rockers like "Fidgety Queen" and the lumbering funk of "Nelly the Elephant." For new fans, this album is the place to start; and if they're willing to take it on its own terms, old fans might find a place in their heart for it too.