Babylon: Babylon (1978)
When it comes for the prog rock scene here in America, it seemed like the Midwest and the Northeast Coast (New York, New Jersey, DC, etc.) was where most American prog bands originated. Like Starcastle (from Champagne-Urbana, Illinois), Kansas (from Kansas, of course), Atlantis Philharmonic (from Cleveland), Cathedral (from New York), Ethos (from Ft. Wayne, Indiana), Happy the Man (from Washington, DC, or perhaps one of the Virginia suburbs) and Fireballet (from New Jersey). One exception is Babylon, hailing from St. Petersburg, Florida. During their lifetime, they only released one album, this self-entitled 1978 album, but had since released two albums of live material in 1989 (recorded in ’78) called Night over Never: Live at the Empty Keg 1 and Better Conditions for the Dead: Live at the Empty Keg 2.
Babylon was one of those obscure prog rock bands whose album sadly never received anything received anything more than a local distribution when they existed. The album can be best identified because of the alien on the cover, and with what looks like a hand grabbing the alien’s head. But they created some of the best prog rock to exist in the U.S. Musically they’re influenced by Genesis, with Tony Banks like keyboards (only the keyboards here include the Minimoog, ARP Omni, RMI electric piano, piano, and something called an Orchestron, which is something like a Mellotron that operates on flimsy, plastic optical discs, rather than a rack of tapes), vocals that bring to mind Peter Gabriel (only more dramatic), Hackett-like guitars, and some incredible complex drumming.
There’s only four lengthy cuts on the album, with no dead space. The album starts off with “The Mole in God’s Eyes”. The music starts off slowly, with some spacy Moog, before the music starts kicking in. Here you get treated with lots of great themes and creative passages. “Before the Fall” is much the same, this is only real cut where one certain theme repeats itself several times over the course of the song. I also really like the guitar work in the middle, and the bassist shows that he’s a great bassist, but he is often too buried in the mix to show. No doubt the album’s highpoint is “Dreamfish”. The band seemed to have a sense of humor here. I especially like the use of the RMI electric piano and the ARP Omni synth during this passage. The music gets a little more serious after, with the string synths dominating (actually the ARP Omni not set to any “chorus phasing” settings, just straight up strings). “Cathedral of the Mary Ruin” starts off a bit different, because there’s a bit of a more jazzy atmosphere. But after a couple minutes, the music turns more atmospheric, like the best early ’70s Genesis, and of course there are some more aggressive passages. There’s a couple times the Orchestron is used, in this case, a choir sound which comes to show that the Orchestron just isn’t as good sounding as the Mellotron as far as the choir sound in concerned.
The great news is this album was reissued on CD by Syn-Phonic, a California-based prog label (that also issued the two Live at the Empty Keg albums back in ’89). But the CD featured updated artwork, with the “Babylon” logo now in color, and the alien now looking more like the Grey alien found on the cover of Whitley Strieber’s book Communion (the Grey found on the original LP had more “human” looking eyes, while the Grey on the CD reissue had the black, dark eyes, as how the Greys been portrayed since the time of Strieber’s Communion). Anyway, back on the music, if don’t mind Genesis-influenced prog rock, you’re certain to enjoy this music.
– Rick Leonard: Bass, Voice, Bass Pedals
– Doroccas: Lead Voice, Synthesizers, Electric Piano, Orchestron, Omni
– Rodney Best: Drums, Percussives
– J. David Boyko: Guitar, Mutated Variations Thereof
– G.W. Chambers: Synthesizers, Acoustic & Electric Piano, Orchestron, Omni, Voice