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Spock’s Beard, Genesis, Big Big Train, Mirage, Cirque Du Soleil – what makes you think that drummer Nick D’Virgilio is going to make a concept album?

Okay, rhetorical question. Given D’Virgilio’s 30-year prog CV with the above-mentioned bands and more, it makes sense for his solo album to be based on a concept.

And it’s not a bad concept: a man who’s unhappy with where his life has ended up dumps it all overboard in the search for a meaning to life.

D’Virgilio can sing, he can write and he sure can drum. Plus he’s been able to round up a topnotch cast of musicians and persuade them to serve the album rather than themselves.

The only cover song, Money (That’s What I Want), is also transformed to fit the purpose. There’s no immediate stand-out track on the record, but a couple make an impression after just a few listens.

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.

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