Out Of Limits – THE MARKETTS***

Out Of Limits/Love 1985/Collision Course/Hyper Space/Other Limits/Bell Star/Twilight City/Borealis/Bella Dalena/ Limits Beyond/Saturn/Re-Entry Out of Limits was an album of space theme tunes from the short lived US instrumental group The Marketts. Features the title track which became a US No. 3 hit single. (US:37)

“Listening to this album most of what you experience is a repeated adventure into boredom and frustration. The songs are fine, especially when taken song by song, but hearing each one after another is not an enjoyable experience. Besides the standout single, Out Of Limits, most of what you have here is the same type of surf instrumentals with horns, track after track. The only other track that separates itself from the pack is Bella Dalena.”

“The title track is a classic, but half the rest are rearrangements of the same idea. This makes these guys come off like hacks, even if that was pretty standard for the era. It's a good sound and it works just fine as background music, but hard to give it much more than that.”

“The quality of songwriting and musicianship on this album is top notch. Some of the arrangements have enough depth to be compared to classical music, or 'space-age' jazz, but always fun, surfy and atmospheric. For classic rock-instrumental fans I cannot recommend this album strongly enough.”

“The Marketts biggest success was the hit Out Of Limits, which is one of the all-time great surf records. This album was released in response to that success. It is a decent surf album, although none of the other tunes here are nearly as good.”

“The music is instrumental rock, mostly stuff in a Twilight Zone theme-meets-surf vein. This was and is lightweight, fun music, nothing serious, lots of guitars with plenty of 'surfy' reverb. The quality of the musicianship is very high. Obscure it may be but it's a fun bit of music. Get it and return to the early 60s time when instrumental rock was strong.”

“Despite their otherworldly titles, an eerie and extensively used glissando-pitched organ, and claims that these were 'space age' tunes, this set is best described as surf music, but played on an odd combination of instruments.”