Progressive Rock
InsideOut Music · 28 August 2026
“K-129” (7:52) is the longest of the seven and the one that gets most out of the maritime concept: it takes its name from the Soviet nuclear submarine lost in the Pacific in 1968, the electric guitar imitates submerged machinery and Riccardo Romano’s keyboards supply the depth. The whole record runs 45:07 and is instrumental from end to end.
The starting point is biographical. Rothery grew up in Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast, and that’s where the title and “Sandsend” (4:45) come from — Sandsend being the village next door. “Red Dragon” (4:18) is named after the ship the East India Company used in its early years, opens on a hurdy-gurdy sound, and Hackett plays a sitar guitar on it for the colour he describes himself: “I used a sitar guitar amongst others to give that authentic Eastern feel.” “Pacific Coast Highway” (7:30) closes on his harmonica and Hammond-flavoured keys, the only place on the record that gets anywhere near the blues.
The line-up is Hackett on electric and acoustic guitars, harmonica and backing vocals; Rothery on electric guitar, bass and occasional keyboards; Romano on keyboards and bass, and additionally as co-writer, engineer and mixer; Daniele Pomo on drums for tracks 1 to 5 and Leon Parr for the last two. Miles Showell mastered it at Abbey Road. The video for “The Black Sea” (6:40) was filmed with the full band at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios.
Eight years of work for a meeting between two guitarists who phrase very differently, and the result is hard to attribute: for much of the record you can’t tell who’s playing, and when you can it’s because there’s a Hackett theme. Rothery, the guitarist of sustained notes and solos that breathe, barely gets a passage where his way of playing runs the track. The seven pieces also follow the same plan (atmospheric entry, guitar theme, climax with orchestrated strings), and by the sixth you know what’s coming.
Seven tracks, forty-five minutes, InsideOut Music, 28 August. We listed it as an announcement in the July–August issue, when it hadn’t come out yet.
Rating: 7.2/10
Text by Guillem Cardós