Fish On Friday - Quiet Life album review

Belgian prog rockers step on the (classical) gas

Cover art for Fish On Friday - Quiet Life album

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The quality of the band members and guests that have joined Belgian prog rockers Fish On Friday for their fourth album is the best indication of the band’s growing status among their fellow travellers.

Bassist Nick Beggs (Steve Hackett, Steven Wilson) has signed up, adding an extra dimension to the rhythm section. Saxophone/flute player Theo Travis (Soft Machine, Robert Fripp, Bill Nelson, Steven Wilson) and guitarist John Mitchell (It Bites, Arena, Lonely Robot) have also contributed.

But it’s the presence of Alan Parsons who produced one track – In The Key Of Silence – that says most about where Fish On Fridays are coming from and where they are heading.

It’s not just the 70s classical prog influence that defines the band’s style, it’s how founder members William Beckers and Frank Van Bogeart have updated and revitalised that style that has attracted such illustrious Brits to their cause.

Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.