Listening to Affinity and Restoration reminded me how long it's been since I've actually popped this thing in and gave it a whirl. Now I don't remember exactly how tough I was on Restoration back when it first came out, because holy shit is Enter The 5th Dimension a lot rougher than I had ever remembered.
It starts out strong - "Blind" is a solid track even though the weak-ass tissue-paper production render the guitars thinner-sounding than an Al Stewart album, and I'm always up for obscure samples plunked down in the middle of the song, but the solo section definitely goes on for too long a la "A Nightmare to Remember". What's really impressive is how the Restoration remake "Darkest Light" is almost half as long while still not giving up anything essential. "Black Seed" continues this trend of not having needed much work to update for Restoration - the redux "Earthlings" differs slightly in lyrics and vocal arrangements but is otherwise a strict upgrade with excellent atmosphere and The Mountain-esque harmony singing.
Things start to slip past that, though - "Manifolds" is a functional instrumental but it pales in comparison to their rare future instrumentals or even the instrumental sections in later songs. "Souls" features a rare acoustic bit opening things up and is the song I was most looking forward to in a rewritten form, while closer "Snow" provided the template for the prog snob panty dropper "Crystallized" at a distinctly slower BPM and with perhaps some unfortunate lyrical choices -- the Restoration revitalization, despite dragging towards the end, is a more satisfying experience on all counts.
Held up against the polished and well-honed material on Restoration, Enter The 5th Dimension looks pretty rough, but it was a product of it's time: clearly a band experimenting with a lot of different ideas, concerned more with just collaborating together and seeing what they could put together -- certainly not something that can be held against them particularly harshly.
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