Reviewed by Tim Roberts

A difficult album to review, this one. The vast majority of the tracks are remixes of Joey Belville's (aka The Echoing Green) own compositions first heard on 'Defend Your Joy'. This sounds like a really good idea on first thought but unfortunately it goes to make the album quite schizophrenic. The current trend in returning to classic early electric pop (brought into life by bands like Kraftwerk) has been taken on board by Mr Belville but has been poorly executed. The melodies are fairly cheesy, the vocals are dull and (in quite a few places) out of tune and some of the backings (music, not vocals) are awful (the guitar intro to "Son In My Eyes" being a prime example)! Joey has obviously been influenced by Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Ultravox, etc and has tried to fuse these with pop/dance sensibilities as Ultravox did with their stunning 'Revelation' album. The fact that 'Aurora 7.2' has nothing of the class of Ultravox, the originality of Kraftwerk or the simplicity and style of Mr Numan go to make this a particularly bland album. Scott Blackwell's remix of "Enter Love" cuts above the banality for five minutes or so but even then it doesn't save a sinking ship.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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