(Anonymus) A whole lotta lute - Focus were burning up the world charts, band colleague van Leer was turning out rather wishywashy solo flute stuff and selling well, the youthful Akkerman ego was in overdrive ... what to do but swish him off to New York for his own "I am a serious artiste oh yes" album - dig the manicured Messianic cover! - and let him get stuck into some classical lute stuff. And very nice too, though Akkerman playing a lute is like Merlene Ottey running in clogs - give the man a geetar, please. And in fact the stand out tracks are guitar based - Javeh, a dark & moody acoustic thing, semi-improvised apparently, and extremely haunting, and the long "suite" - choke on that, Thijs! - Lammy, celebrating Akkerman's girlfriend at the time - the foxy chick on the inside cover - with choirs and all sorts of things and a central acoustic & orchestral melodic burst that is simply heart-lifting. The Akkerman career has been an odd journey since the dizzy days of Tabernakel and the lute is rarely dusted off these days but the music he makes continues to be some of the most fascinating around.
(Richard Sewell) A bit hit 'n' miss in terms of solo lute music - JA's Rainbow concert encore on You-tube introduced me to the world of lute music (and there are 2 tracks from Tabernakel which can be viewed on his website). That being said, having heard quite a bit of lute music since then, I found this to be a rather odd combination of great and not so great music. The first track is a version of Dowland's fantasia (the same as the Rainbow concert encore), but spoilt by the additional instrumentation which overpowers the lute. Tracks 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 feature solo lute, sometimes played with IMO too much force on the strings (perhaps this is typical of guitarists who then go on to play lute: Julian Bream is also wont to do this, although not to the same degree). These caveats aside, the choice of pieces is very good, and it's worth checking out seeing how lutenists like Nigel North tackle them. As regards the non-lute pieces, they're, well, OK (yes, I was and still am a fan of Focus). In this respect, the album is typical of the unevenness of 70's albums in terms of musical quality. In many ways JA helped to bring the lute in from the cold in the 70's (in a similar way to Sting's more recent activity), for which praise is due, but if you want to hear absolutely top-class lute music, explore elsewhere afterwards.
(Bruce Langridge) A classic in places - I wonder if Jan Akkerman had got a bit carried away with his cult status when he made this. A messianic cover, choral parts of Lammy (the album's epic piece) that sound they are heralding the king, a bizarre version of Focus's House of the King and a serious helping of unfashionable lute. When I bought this album in the mid 1970s I thought of Akkerman as some kind of messianic music figure and kind of went along with it. Now ... well, I still love the album and although I always liked Jan's lute playing, I probably would have preferred more of the experimentation of Javeh, the acoustic/orchestrated stand out track for me. Lammy is also great, especially the electric guitar work that follows on the breathtaking style of Fresh Air from the Profile album.
(D Lewis) A mixture of the unexpected and simply ... mixed - Not sure what to make of this album, moments of brilliance, moments of crass .... If you're looking for Focus type material from Jan - forget this album. If you want chill out, quiet soothing - forget that too because it rises and falls, it quirks and grates, it pleases and maddens all at the same time, sometimes in the same track. Its not classical, its not classical Focus even, it is classical introspective, self indulgent 70s music, but Lammy is b****y good all the same.