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For Absent Friends - FAF Out Of HAL

Artist:	For Absent Friends
Title:	FAF Out Of HAL
Label:	SI Music SI 3071-2
Length(s):	48 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1995
Month of review:	05/1995

Line up

A.T. - vocals
Edwin Roes - guitars
Rene Bacchus - bass
Peter de Jong - keyboards
Ed Wernke - drums.

Tracks

1)	Downtown (edited Version)	3.34
2)	Into Love	3.37
3)	Memories	3.35
4)	The Fight	3.35
5)	Dreamer	3.34
6)	Looking For Love	3.04
7)	Someone Like You (live)	5.57
8)	Downtown (live)	5.04
9)	Running Scared (live)	4.25
10)	The Bad, The Fat & The Ugly (live)	4.21
11)	Attitude (live)	7.24

Summary

FAF is a typical neo-prog band, bordering on melodic rock (well, it just is melodic rock these days). In their early years they paraded their affection for Rush by playing La Villa live. I liked their mini album a lot and also the song Both Worlds from the the album of the same name. The CD Both Worlds wasn't as good as their mini album, because they got more commercial. Their last album I missed, so I can not compare the live\acoustic versions with the originals.

The music

The album starts with an 'edited version', which smells like single material to me. Indeed Downtown is a very accessible song. Songs 2 up to including 5 are acoustic tracks, track 6 is a left over and subsequent songs have been recorded live at the Holland Aankomst Lijn (HAL).

The acoustic tracks are good enough to be interesting played unplugged, especially The Fight. Interesting about this song is that A.T. sings low key and I think he should try that more, because his voice is so recognizable, it may be good to take every opportunity to introduce variation. I wonder if any of the more progressive bands can play unplugged versions of their songs and keep it interesting (Anekdoten, Anglagard, you name them).

Again a new version of Dreamer, now acoustic loud, slow percussion. I like it, although it's not the best version I've heard.

The demo track Looking for Love isn't very interesting, so I'll leave it at that.

If you like FAF at all, you will also like these live tracks; they are energetic, but not overly much. Personally I'm not very fond of Attitude but it sure beats You and Me as a closer. A strange duckling is track 10, which is instrumental, but still definitely FAF. The keyboard sound on 7 wines, but I'm not sure about the cause of this, but for now we'll blame the recording. It does seem that more of the live tracks have this problem.

Conclusion

This album is not an unplugged album and not a live album, but both and that doesn't help I think. I can imagine that they thought it unwise to release one of either, but for consistency it might have been better, because the album sounds like a filler to me now. This doesn't mean the songs are bad, because they aren't. The acoustic versions, especially The Fight, do show that the songs FAF write are good enough in their own right.

The live versions are alright, the band usually adds things to the studio version, but the differences aren't as large as they sometimes were (for instance when they played the disco version of The Stone and almost nobody noticed).

Good melodic rock on an inconsistent album.