Customer Reviews

UK

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This band represents a vital piece of the wonderfully incestuous history of English progressive rock. As any fan knows, members of the UK prog scene tended to move freely from one band to another, creating all sorts of interesting cross-pollinations to the point that the genre's evolution looks something like a geneaology chart.

Just to mention two examples: John Wetton, formerly of King Crimson et.al., stopped by here before going on to join the prog-veteran supergroup Asia, while Bill Bruford brought credentials of Yes, King Crimson and others to this outing. He also has had many other stops since.

This is an excellent album that does not deserve its relative lack of attention (both today and when it was released). It takes progressive rock in a new, jazz fusion-oriented direction that can be seen to have led to Brand X, among others.

As a teenager, I purchased UK in the 70s on vinyl. It really took me two decades to develop a full appreciation for its complexities, to the point that it now ranks as one of my great progressive albums of all time. If you have any affinity for this type of music (or great music in general), you won't regret adding this album to your collection.

If you're a progressive rock fan, this disc is a treasure. Almost thirty years after it's initial release, this album still sounds fresh and leaves a stunning impact. When I first heard this I was listening to a lot of heavy guitar oriented music and the ethereal layered keyboards of Eddie Jobson made me form the initial opinion that this was mellow. After hundreds of repeated spins this has become one of my favorite discs, and even though there are many quiet passages it's far from mellow. It just takes time to appreciate the depth of this music. Clocking in a little over 46 minutes, this disc is full of smooth as glass segues and matchless music with all band members contributing and/or collaborating in the songwriting duties.

Eddie Jobson's keyboard playing and occasional electric violin work is spot on. John Wetton has a haunting vocal tone that is perfectly suited for this type of music and his bass playing is awesome. Bill Bruford, the master percussion player, pulls off many syncopated, impossible, drumming maneuvers with ease. Allan Holdsworth is one of the most original guitar players ever and his playing throughout this disc is amazing. It's a shame that this lineup of U.K. lasted less than a year, but they created, in my opinion, one of the best prog-rock discs ever.

The début UK album remains one of the best progressive rock albums of all time, whose appeal extends beyond the normal 'prog set' and into the worlds of jazz/fusion and even new wave. My original vinyl sounds so good I used to use it all the time to demo speakers when I was in the sound business. After many years without any reissue on CD I was excited at this new release which was a long time coming.
When I put it on it sounded as though the worst A-to-D conversion equipment in the history of sound was used to master it. Gone was the driving bass, the crystal clear treble. This cd is thin, muddy, and frankly awful. Shame on who ever did the master of this cd. I cannot think of a greater missed opportunity.

The praise lavished on this title is deserved. The problem I have here isn't the music, it's the cd. They recorded it from less than clean source material, and even at that, they did a poor job. I was disappointed that that cd couldn't surpass the original vinyl in terms of playback quality. I finally went out and bought a cleaner piece of vinyl and recorded it onto my computer, remixing and editing out the pops and hisses in the process. The EG label is hit and miss in this regard.
Bottom line the music is great, and if you don't want to go thru the tedious process I described, the cd is the way to go. Enjoy.

At the end of a decade tired of prog rock excesses, Eddie Jobson (Roxy Music), John Wetton (King Crimson), Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson) and Allan Holdsworth got together to form what can be trully considered a super-band, an easy parallel to the genius of the 60s Cream. Following this work, Wetton would go on to become part of the very-commercial sum of the talents of four prog rock stars (Wetton, Howe, Palmer and Downes) that was intended to become a super-band: Asia, which in my opinion failed to achieve such a status to be just another one of the many rock bands that scored a few hits at the beginning of the 80s.

This album simply blew my mind from the very first song. It achieves some sounds and contains arrangements that you could identify later on in the work of King Crimson during the 80s. This could be explained also, since Bill Bruford would later become part of KC.

Although not the most famous album/band of the genre, this album deserves a very special space in your collection if you're serious about Prog Rock.

In 1978 four extraordinary musicians came together to form the outfit known as U.K.. Bill Bruford and John Wetton, from King Crimson, joined Eddie Jobson, of Roxy Music, and fusion guitarist Alan Holdsworth to create this dark, brooding but powerful recording. Progressive rock fans held onto the hope that this could prove to be a new direction for the genre. Unfortunately, it proved to be more of a last gasp as the band split in two following this debut. Only Wetton and Jobson remained and presented two uninspired follow-up recordings. This disc, on the other hand, is exceptional and is well worth adding to one's collection. It presents a creative and innovative marriage of progressive rock to that of jazz-fusion while borrowing greatly from the direction laid out by Wetton, Bruford and Robert Fripp in their last collective efforts with King Crimson. Highly recommended...Simon

First off I want to say that the U.K. self-titled album is one of my all-time favorite albums so I give the music 100 stars.

The reason that I am giving this re-mastered CD version only one star is because the sound quality is terrible and there is simply no reason for this. The highs have been rolled off, most likely in an effort to reduce tape hiss and/or background noise and as a result the music lacks any real punch or dynamic range. It's almost as if all of the life has been sucked out of the music.

This is one of the problems that often happens when a musician thinks he is also an mastering engineer. I mean that with no disrespect towards Eddie Jobson as I feel that he is one of the finest musicians on the planet but clearly he knows nothing about digital audio mastering and he should have let someone like Roger Nichols or Bernie Grundman handle the task of re-mastering this great album as it deserves better than this.

If you want to hear the ultimate audio version of the U.K.-"U.K." CD then you need to pick up a copy of the Japanese mini-LP style sleeve version that was released in Japan on Virgin/Charisma catalog number VJCP-68779. It was issued in 2006 and is now out of print but if you search for it you will find it. Just be careful because they are many places that are selling bootleg copies that look exactly like the official version including the mini-LP style packaging. The only way to tell is by the printed CD label which looks very shoddy when compared to the official Japanese pressing. Good luck and I hope this helps you in obtaining the true and best audio version of this great album.

Here I am again, going against type. Normally, there's two types of bands I avoid like the plague:

A) Supergroups

B) Bands that are named after geographical locations

My experience has been typically that both types of musical endeavors are usually ridden with crass commercial machinations, merciless hype, over-inflated egos and cliched tripe that adds up to far less than the sum of it's collective experiences and talents.

Then every once in a great while, there comes along a collective of musicians of considerable talent and brilliance that completely goes against the norm and produces a brilliant set of music. UK was one such wonderful anomaly!!

For a wonderful moment in time, this foursome produced some of the most adventurous, state-of-the-art (for the time period) symphonic progressive rock that you were ever likely to hear. While certainly very technically gifted, UK did not let flashy grandstanding obscure great songcraft. Each piece has incredibly strong melody and certainly more than enough instrumental fireworks to satisfy the most rabid prog fan.

The standouts for me are the 3 part "In The Dead of Night" epic that opens the album, the tear-inducing "30 Years" (what I would call a "Kleenex Classic") and probably my absolute top fave "Alaska/Time To Kill". The "Alaska" portion works so well as Eddie Jobson conjures up vast pictures of a windswept, desolate, snow-covered landscape on his synths, giving way to a firey interchange between all four musicians leading into the harrowing survival tale of "Time To Kill". This is easily John Wetton's most wrenching vocal performance on the album.

Another highlight is Allan Holdsworth's interjections with extruded, otherworldly guitar parts that sound totally impossible! I personally remember hearing this album when it was first released and scratching my head saying "HOW THE DEVIL DOES HE DO THAT??". Throughout the whole album, he unleashes extruded silvery chords, death-defying legato melody lines and things that sound, like I said, totally impossible on guitar. Bill Bruford and John Wetton carry over the telepathic brilliance they cultivated as the King Crimson rhythm section quite beautifully here. Never a dull moment.

"Nevermore" is a great feature for Allan, ranging from beautiful and thoughtful acoustic flourishes at the start to haunting "guitar orchestra" passages in the opening verses and firey trade-offs with Eddie Jobson midway through. Best of all, the whole song develops so beautifully like a symphonic piece, with Eddie Jobson's colorful textural shifts and swaths holding your rapt attention.

"Mental Medication" is the one cut that didn't quite fly for me. It starts off beautifully enough, with Allan unleashing some silvery, ghostly chord melody and a heartfelt John Wetton vocal introduces the song's theme. However, the whole piece takes on a rather stilted "pieced together" feel, with a lot of odd-meters and intricate passages for their own sake that don't make complete sense, in stark contrast to the beautifully written musical sentences throughout the rest of the album.

That quibble aside, this writer is of the opinion that UK's debut album is an essential part of your library, a display of unabashed brilliance, and sadly, a sort of swan-song, one last moment of brilliance before the forces of crass commercialism took their toll and told those of great talent they were no longer wanted around. Play it loudly, play it proudly!! Let the naysayers be served notice that real talent still counts for something!!!

The UK debut album can arguably be considered one of the best progressive electronic music recordings of it's time. The heady mix of thoughtful and interesting composition and technical prowess makes for exciting and challenging listening. This group, and particularly this release, stands out in a time when there was a plethora of progressive talent such as Brand X, Novus, Soft Machine, Gong, Gentle Giant, Passport, and even sits favorably along side the sister genre of Fusion with Weather Report, Return to Forever, Zappa, and Lifetime. You have to hunt long and hard to find new talent of this calibre in this vain. Holdsworth and Bruford have continued for years to offer ground breaking, genre-bending music. Highly recommended!

The critics of the era recognized the magnitude of this band at the time, but somehow, the masses didn't bite. The pure musicianship on this album is staggering! I always tend to think of the most powerful musicians on the planet as being those to whom the rest of the musicians are/were listening. Bruford is one of the most highly respected rhythmatists in the world. Holdsworth, despite his low popular profile almost single handedly invented the techniques that Eddie Van Halen would later get credit for and introduce to the masses. Eddie Jobson is a multi-talented keyboard/violin wizard. His keybooard technique is powerful and technically masterful, and his violin playing (electric violin was still quite novel at the time) can often be confused with Holdsworth's fluid, soaring guitar leads. John Wetton is, to me, the consummate "working man's" bassist/vocalist. Despite a marvelously mellow baritone voice, an incredibly deft, technically flawless bass talent and the mindblowing ability two exercise both of these talents simultaneously, John Wetton is no household name. Together they created a single album which is beyond compare.

Own this album! Later U.K. albums are also good, but do not contain this, original U.K. lineup.