(Neo-Prog) The Watch - Planet Earth? - 2010, Flac, Tracks +.cue +.log, Scans, lossless

Simone ROSSETTI, the charismatic front man of The NIGHT WATCH, continues his impressive work in the new band The WATCH, but he's the only connection between the two bands. The NIGHT WATCH also was featured with one song on "The Reading Room" (2000) album and than they quit. Simone is an great vocalist/flautist and his voice is very similar to Peter GABRIEL and so the sound on the new album is again like early GENESIS. There are some reminiscences to MARILLION, SPOCK'S BEARD and ÄNGLAGARD too.

The WATCH's debut album "Ghost" sounds so much like GENESIS. The music is very similar to Peter GABRIEL-era GENESIS with lots of magnificient bombastic Mellotron. Folks, this is a total job that sounds like outtakes between "Nursery Crime" and "Selling England By The Pound". This is "the best album GENESIS never made"! Now we can add another classic to the list. A band to Watch out for!

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009

EAC extraction logfile from 18. February 2010, 16:27

The Watch / Planet Earth ?

Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GH20LS15 Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 667
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
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Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=%e" %s -o %d

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
---------------------------------------------------------
1 | 0:00.00 | 6:11.31 | 0 | 27855
2 | 6:11.31 | 7:41.12 | 27856 | 62442
3 | 13:52.43 | 5:51.60 | 62443 | 88827
4 | 19:44.28 | 8:15.28 | 88828 | 125980
5 | 27:59.56 | 5:58.16 | 125981 | 152846
6 | 33:57.72 | 3:41.03 | 152847 | 169424
7 | 37:39.00 | 7:22.50 | 169425 | 202624

Track 1

Filename J:\EAC\The Watch - Planet Earth (2010)\01 - Welcome to your Life.wav

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Track quality 100.0 %
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Track 2

Filename J:\EAC\The Watch - Planet Earth (2010)\02 - Something Wrong.wav

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Track 3

Filename J:\EAC\The Watch - Planet Earth (2010)\03 - Earth.wav

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Track 4

Filename J:\EAC\The Watch - Planet Earth (2010)\04 - All the Lights in Town.wav

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Track 5

Filename J:\EAC\The Watch - Planet Earth (2010)\05 - The World Inside.wav

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Track 6

Filename J:\EAC\The Watch - Planet Earth (2010)\06 - New Normal.wav

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Track 7

Filename J:\EAC\The Watch - Planet Earth (2010)\07 - Tourist Trap.wav

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End of status report

REM GENRE "Progressive Rock"
REM DATE 2010
REM DISCID 570A8D07
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v0.99pb5"
PERFORMER "The Watch"
TITLE "Planet Earth ?"
FILE "01 - Welcome to your Life.wav" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Welcome to your Life"
PERFORMER "The Watch"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Something Wrong"
PERFORMER "The Watch"
INDEX 00 06:05:31
FILE "02 - Something Wrong.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Earth"
PERFORMER "The Watch"
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FILE "03 - Earth.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
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Well, I know The Watch (and Night Watch) but Inever bother to write a review, not even for the so called ´classic´ Vaccum (which, by the way, I bought after reading the glowing reviews when I joined PA). It´s not that I don´t like them or similar minded outfits.The main problem with all the bands that try to emulate (or simply cloning) Gabriel era Genesis is the fact that they are all good to reproduce that group´s timbres, arrangements, voices and even manneirisms, but rarely their real soul that is their stunning songwriting skill. Worse, they tend to concentrade their interpretation on the more dense, obscure and complex side of Genesis (like most parts of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway) instead of their great melodic and creative approach of their best known numbers (Citizen Cane is a good exemple of how unfathomable and plain complex they can get by this route).

The Watch does not exactly fall in that trap. Their use of acoustic guitars, Banks sounding keyboards and Hackett-like electric guitar solos are very well done and reminds me of Genesis best in many ways. Unfortunatly they did not come up with a convincing bunch of songs to match their good intentions. Planet Earth? However shows an obvious improvemnt over their previous effords. Not only the production here is much superior to all they´ve had before but the first two tracks are probably the best I ever heard written by this italian outfit. It was almost like facing what would be if Peter Gabriel stayed on around the time of A Trick Of The Tail. The remaining songs are not so good and listenging to them soon made my initial enthusiasm fade. Each one a little weaker than the previous. Not bad, really, but a little let down after the electrifying start.

Obviously all the musicians involved are very skillful and all. Simone Rossetti sounds A LOT like Peter Gabriel. And I guess they are on the way to write better and more convincing tunes in near future. At least this is what I hope. They had developed and deserve consideration. So a 3 star rating seems just about right. Good,