Nektar - Recycled

Listening to this album from Nektar, you can get a general idea of why guitarist Roye Albrighton decided to leave the band and how damn good it is as a function for this band to make another concept album to follow into the footsteps of Journey to the Center of the Eye, A Tab in the Ocean, and the two-part epic classic, Remember the Future. Nektar recorded Recycled in 1975 on the Bellaphon label, during the Down to Earth tour. Recycled tells the story of the political boundaries of the mass consumption and the views that the human race’s view of the relationship on the definition and the existence they cause to go through an interval. The album glows brightly between the two Nektar albums and it defines the band’s solar system rock style and harmonic beauty to the musical background of the Space Rock homage.
I always felt that when Nektar was making this album, they took science-fiction influential backgrounds from Isaac Asimov’s The Naked Sun to be the influential story for Recycled – Focusing on the views of the social society of the Sol and to communicate throughout the holographic telepresence. As part of research for the fifth album, Recycled carries through the atmospheric torch of outer space music with Guitar Synthesized swath power. Recycle starts off with a zooming keyboard introduction as it sets up with the guitars chugging like a train along with the synths and the vocals setting the scenery of the background of existence and then it becomes a shattering weirdness with the computers going haywire.
The band then becomes robotic with mesmerizing time changes on the exploded compositions. Arrangements like the neo-classical turned jazz rocker of the dynamic 4-minute instrumental suite Costa Del Sol and the almost sequel to Remember the Future with the hypnotic vertigo upbeat tempo of a 6-minute boogie rocker Marvellous Moses. The song has Roye jamming away on his guitar and singing while it goes into a warning fierce of sonic shattering crescendo going fast with the band speeding towards the light then doing a Floyd-like style that sends a shiver down my spine is so fucking good, you began to wonder how the fuck did they do that?
But it’s almost like another science-fiction rock opera in which RTF left off, this time in two acts. They really got the ball rolling to do this in two acts, but for me it’s the first act is the real centerpiece of the concept album. Mixing up with a Patrick Moraz style on the keyboards similar to the Story of I, but with a jazzy reception. There are some amazing songs including the closing spacey folk ballad, It’s All Over; The galloping experimental proto hard rock style of an adventure into the Monolith with the synthesized guitar layered beauty of Cybernetic Consumption which begins in Avant-Garde synthesized computers going off the wall and then becoming a psychedelic stoner masterpiece with synths, guitars, and drums going off the wall; Recycle Countdown is more of a church-like reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s Meddle-era and Yes’ Close to the Edge; Automatic Horroscope starts off with a HAL 9000 spoken introduction and then becoming a flourishing tribute to Hawkwind’s Robert Calvert ala faster beat tempos that soars through the dazzling heavenly sky that becomes a powerhouse for the Nektar nutheads.
A strange concept album, overlooked, and for Roye Albrighton, left the band after they were getting ready to work on 1977’s Magic is a Child, but if you love the first six albums and the return of Roye Albrighton with The Prodigal Son, Evolution, Book of Days, and the live album of their 40th anniversary of Fortyifed, you must listen to this.