by Bruce Eder
The concept album rears its head -- and rears back about 500 years. While other progressive rock groups were doing album-length suites dealing with apocalyptic themes, Amazing Blondel were doing 20-minute long multi-part pieces (&fantasia& is the best classical music term) about Kent, England, and songs depicting idealized love between men and women, man and nature, and man and God. It all plays a little like the Strawbs' work of this same era without the sardonic edge, and is all achingly beautiful. [The 1996 CD reissue is especially pleasing for eliminating the problem of surface noise that afflicted most copies of the original LP.]