Album Review

Sean Arthur Joyce [allmusic.com]

Illusions on a Double Dimple is one of those albums that has that mysterious quality of sounding ever-new, truly timeless, like... well I'll let you fill in that blank. Thankfully, we are blessed with many such recordings in rock history. This may sound like overblown praise for a German ELP lookalike circa 1973 doing heavy Prog, but Double Dimple has that exciting synergy that happens when master musicians get together in a room and the vibe is electric. (Reminding us again that music is a form of magical art.) Jurgen's nimble keyboard melodies propel the songs along with never a drop in dramatic tension. His classic Hammond and Moog sound is given the keys to the highway by Helmut Kollen's propulsive bass lines, making him the living heartbeat of this recording. His acoustic guitar over Fritz's Moog arabesques lends a perennial freshness to the sound. Kollen's electric guitar stays on the melodic, the supporting rather than the limelight, adding colour to Fritz's driving organ. As other reviewers have noted, there's a strange lapse of sound engineering with Hans Bathelt's percussion, as if he's pounding away on cardboard boxes much of the time. This is truly tragic, since his performance here is sheer sustained brilliance, both supporting the groove and embroidering songs with slinky counterpart rhythms. Let's hope a truly re-mastered version is possible that corrects this sock over the poor man's microphones. Still, Double Dimple remains a classic of the Prog genre in all the aspects that make such music great: a capacity to surprise, even after multiple listens-and over many decades-a dancer's balance between light and heavy, hard driving and dreamy. And as with most Prog recordings, the album functions as a whole, not an assemblage of parts-more of a sonata than a series of songs. The rare synergy that allows artists to capture this magic with just the right balance. This is what makes it such a great creative achievement. And in my view, Triumvirat achieved effortless mastery on Double Dimple, an achievement they never quite equalled. A must for any listener who enjoys complex, stimulating, dreamy, interesting music.