by François Couture
Just a few months after Live From Oz, Planet X unleashed its second studio album, MoonBabies. Here, Virgil Donati, Tony MacAlpine, and Derek Sherinian push the jazz-rock envelope farther into progressive rock territory. Most tracks feature oblique melodic lines and complex time signatures (in the press release, Sherinian is quoted saying, "Our most exotic time signature is four"). The pretty straightforward "Ignotus Per Ignotium," previewed on Live From Oz, lied about the group's direction. The hard rocker finds itself isolated at the end of the album. The other tracks rock hard, but in much more challenging ways.
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