Time, Tension & Intervention

This is the debut album of a British progressive act headed up by the ludicrously talented Adam Warne - a 20-year-old keyboardist/drummer/singer/composer who started writing a lot of the incredible music on this record when he was 16. It's one thing for Justin Bieber - also 20 - to have puked-up some of his tunes as a teeny; it's quite another for Warne to present a batch of complex, inventive, shifting and always melodic pieces that instantly recall Yes, IQ, Marillion and Camel. That said, "Time, Tension & Intervention" is not a copy-cat exercise or tunes cobbled together by a bunch of precocious youths check-listing time signatures and synth patches. Within a few spins of "Time, Tension & Intervention," the band imprints with an instantly identifiable sound - and look for this record to land on plenty of year-end Best-Of lists in the prog community.

- RICK KOSTER