Album of the Day

Volume One, by Mastermind (1990/1996): It's rare to find prog reviews in anything resembling the mainstream press. Sure, the 70s staples (and Marillion, occasionally) show up, but not much else. So I remember quite vividly sitting in a movie theater lobby in Charleston while home from college, flipping through the local weekly, and finding a review of the 1996 rerelease of this album (I have the 1990 version). It was a pretty fair assessment of an album that sounds a bit like what ELP would sound like if Keith Emerson left and John Petrucci joined up and wired his guitar into Emerson's left behind synths. What I specifically recall is the incredibly apt description of "Long Distance Love Affair" - that "it has to be heard to be believed." And it wasn't a complement!