Trespass - GENESIS*****

Looking For Someone/White Mountain/Visions Of Angels/Stagnation/Dusk/The Knife

With their second album Trespass, progressive British group Genesis unleash their classic trademark sound of the Peter Gabriel era, featuring melodic songs, complex arrangements and a diversity of material.

"Unlike the band's later pop-oriented music, their earlier material was very progressive, experimental, and innovative. Long, elaborate tunes that evolve from start to finish, growing upon themselves and creating art in the process. This album was no exception."

"Now that's more like it, Trespass is where Genesis evolved and turned their soft pop sound from the debut into a much more complex and diverse prog rock album that would define them as a band. The Knife is still a classic and the perfect example of how a prog rock song should sound."

"Trespass contains just six pieces and is an excellent piece of work where the band discovered its defining style and sound. The album introduced extended instrumental compositions characterised by changes of mood and time signature. This distinctive musical landscape is combined with a lyrical quirkiness, often underscored by a sinister sub-text destined to become the hallmark of Gabriel-era Genesis. Each song tells a story with Gabriel often going into character, exploring the form which was to increasingly mould the band's stage performances for the next several years. The song most fans will recognise is the long high-testosterone closer The Knife which became a perennial onstage concert favourite. Trespass however contains more considered and thoughtful pieces."

"The first true Genesis album shows that, even before the arrival of Steve Hackett and Phil Collins, the band managed to be not only progressive pioneers but masters of establishing their own distinctive atmosphere. A lot of the album has the much vaunted 'pastoral' atmosphere associated with the band, in heavier doses than on any subsequent album."

"Set among snow blanketed forests and ice capped mountains, there's a cold, pastoral feel ringing through Trespass' songs, enhanced by the soft focus, cathedral reverbed production job and the band's chamber-pop vocal harmonies, with the juxtaposition of drifting acoustic sections and bursts of electric flight lending to the drama."