At the Circus is the third Album from German multi-instrumentalist Mikey Wenzl’s Starquake project. The first two (Times that Matter and Time Space Matter) were both excellent homages to Mikey’s love of 1970s style progressive rock.
At the Circus builds on that to be, in my opinion, even better than the first two.
Go back fifty years or so when bands such as Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Yes, Camel, Pink Floyd et al were at their peak and that’s what At the Circus is all about. Crunching heavy riffs, lots of swirling organs and other keys/sythns, multi-harmony vocals and melodies and plenty of twiddly proggy bits too.
A short intro of fairground type sounds and we’re straight in to the heavy progressive Heep/Purple style stuff with Life’s a Circus. The big biting riffs backed up with the Hammond organ, cutting solos and the layered vocals with a catchy hook. Packs a lot in to three and a half minutes.
Clowns Don’t Cry is another (as we say here in Yorkshire) “good ‘Un” as is Nu Knots – frantic, speedy and heavy as you like, more Hammond/swirling keys, a bit of a change of pace mid-track and still time to squeeze in a nice solo in to three and a half minutes. Have a listen:
Life Without You is a nicely more melodic song bookended with the short duo of proggy instrumentals Strings Attached and No Strings Attached.
Other highlights on an album so good it’s hard to single out anything more outstanding that the rest check out Never Really Over coming in a six minutes of that glorious heavy progressive big riffs and keys including a chunky Hammond solo and the similarly heavy six and a half minutes of All My Friends Are Dead.
The closer – Farewell – is eight and a half minutes incorporating everything and all elements of what Mikey clearly wants to achieve with Starquake and his fondness for the 1970s heavy/progressive rock.
At the Circus captures the essence of 1970s rock/prog so well. It’s a done so well and a real pleasure to listen to for a simple lad such as myself who to a large extent is still stuck in that decade musically with my ongoing fondness of not only NWOBHM but also the proggy side of it all too.
Check out At the Circus and Starquake’s previous albums on their Bandcamp page:
https://starquake1.bandcamp.com/album/at-the-circus