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As promised, Arena is releasing two EP’s that go with the
“Contagion” album. This is the first, the second will appear later
and will be entitled “Contagium”. These EP’s fit in the digipack
limited edition version of “Contagion” but of course that leaves you
with the package of this EP. A dilemma? ;-)
The Audio tracks.
Usually, an extra EP comes with some left-overs from the album
session that didn’t make it on the album, so you expect them to be
inferior to the album tracks. But this is certainly not true for
this EP. At least 3 of the 4 new tracks deserve to be on the full
album. You can even reconstruct the double album as it would have
been, because, in the booklet, you can find between which tracks of
“Contagion” you should place this songs.
”Vanishing Act” is an instrumental that starts as a Pendragon song
but changes after a while to the well known Arena sound. A track
with a lot of energy.
”The Hour Glass” is, together with the previous track, to follow
“Painted Man” on the album. A typical Arena song, with superb vocals
by Rob.
“Contagious” starts a bit (too) slow but the finishing guitar solo
is sublime.
I first thought that ”I Spy” was the only track that didn’t really
fit on the album. But I have listened to it after “Mea Culpa” on
“Contagion”, the place where it should be, and it’s doing very well
on that spot. It’s a track with vocals accompanied by an acoustic
guitar, followed by a string solo.
The special remix of “Witch Hunt” was really a surprise for me. I
usually hate remixes, but this one isn’t that bad. I still prefer
the original, but this is a nice track. The dance rhythm and the
electronic device on Rob’s voice are some pleasant extras.
The multimedia part.
A lot of extra footage, but only the first two are really
interesting. The “Skin Game Video Footage” is the clip they used as
video projection during their live shows on the “Contagion” tour.
Beautiful animation but a bit boring without the show in front of
it. Nice for people who attended this live shows.
The second interesting multimedia part is the Ghost Vocals section.
The tracks sung by John Mitchell to give Rob Sowden an idea how the
melody lines for the vocals sounded like. Never intended to being
published, this doesn’t sound that bad at all, except the sound is a
bit naked without the rhythm section. He sounds a bit like Peter
Gabriel on these tracks, but of course you already know his voice
from The Urbane.
There is also a gallery with pictures of people who were in the
‘Floodgate Choir’ from the “Contagion” album. There also a page with
the lyrics of this EP, but I would rather have seen them in the
booklet. Now they are on this multimedia page, where you can’t even
print them out. Finally there’s also a screensaver with only some
pictures of the artwork of “Contagion”.
There’s nothing really new but if these EP’s are meant to go with
“Contagion”, they have to be in the same style, haven’t they?
A good add on for the “ Contagion” album. If “Contagium” is of the
same quality then you could say that “Contagion” could have been a
very good double album. |
