After three albums it's regrettable that Flash still find themselves having to haul ass for their continued survival. They've got guts, they've got musicians with the chops and they've got enough insight into the mechanics of music-making to be able to offer more in the way of intelligent, innovative musicianship than nine-tenths of their contemporaries. But primarily because they've also got a couple of albums out that are, in large part, extended boredom, they still find themselves playing half-hour warm-up sets to half-empty auditoriums.

Flash's latest, Out of Our Hands, offers two major departures from the music that was Flash and Flash in the Can. The more noticeable of these being that the songs here are roughly one-half as lengthy as they'd been on previous outings, making them more accessible to teeny minds and less susceptible to the major breakdowns in structure that frequently plagued the longer efforts. With the songs scaled down to a little over four minutes apiece there's little chance of any repeats of this embarrassing musical disaster.

The other development is the retirement of Flash founder Peter Banks to the sidelines, from which his only contributions are as guitarist extraordinaire. There's a reason for this, of course, said explanation being that the ex-Yes-man was simultaneously preparing his own "solo" album. Two Sides of Peter Banks. Which is much more in line with what we'd come to expect from (the Banks-dominated) Flash—lengthy instrumental improvisations along a multiplicity of simultaneous riff-lines. But this time, totally on his own and unburdened by vocals and traditional song structures, Banks conveys his ideas with a level of success which he'd never before been able to attain.

Banks wasn't alone in the fullest sense of the word, though, being assisted in the creation of this masterpiece by none other than Focus' Jan "Hocus Pocus" Akkerman. But there's none of that heavy-metal malarkey on this disk. By turns scientific and surrealistic the two guitarists manage to weave a dense web of musical mastery that's both intriguing for its complexity and entertaining for its compelling forcefulness. It's almost as if they've spun an operetta across two sides of vinyl with guitars—with its distinct moods and constantly evolving colorations the music here is not so much "art-rock" as it is sheer art. Hearing it for the first time (under the proper conditions, of course) is a true experience and the effect is scarcely lessened on each successive listening.

Flash's future is open to conjecture at this point—their live act proves the frailties of attempting to produce music of Yes-like complexity in a three-piece format. But we certainly could do with another work on the order of the Banks-Akkerman collaboration. Both are musicians with a lot to offer, and the company of each other seems to be the perfect catalyst for the fullest development of their talents. (RS 146)

GORDON FLETCHER