Short Reviews [Tom Slatter - 2021 - "Escape"]

Here I am writing about an album which has been out for roughly a year, yet so far there is not a single review on PA which makes me both annoyed and incredibly disappointed. This is Tom’s eighth album, and I have reviewed the previous three to this one, yet for some strange reason he is in the underground of the underground. I know he is self-effacing and never takes himself too seriously, nor does his record label come to that, but here we have a true English progressive artist combining elements of Geoff Mann and John Dexter Jones to create music, which is lyrically powerful, musically moving, and progressive in its truest sense as he stamps all over the different sub genres in his refusal to conform. He brings in a few guests to add their touches on a different track each, but primarily this is Tom (vocals, guitar, keyboards) with Michael Cairns (drums) and Keith Buckman (bass). He has taken this album in a much heavier area, with far more crunching guitars yet never really moving into prog metal as there is too much eccentricity in his music for that to take place. While there are four tracks at the 5–6-minute mark this album is bookended by one at 12:36 and another at 19:12 which allows Tom to spread his musical wings and go for it. There is no doubt this is one of the most diverse yet also direct albums he has produced to date, hence my annoyance that this is flying so far under the radar as to be mining tunnels. He is not conforming to any particular norms, but instead is doing whatever he wants. When asked about the album he said, “I’ve always been an indoors kid. Escapism, whether books, music, or computer games, has always meant a lot to me. With the awful year we’ve all had, I felt like an album full of high energy rock songs about spaceships was the escapism we needed.” There is no doubt he is correct, and here he displays yet again that he really is an incredible talent who should be far more widely known within the scene. This is a great album, one which all progheads who enjoy the eccentric English style of many of our great acts need to discover today.