Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
You can have a not half bad band but with a talented drummer on board you will sound so good that people will flock to see you. The drums, for many a group, are the pulse in which Time passes freely, in which sets out the not just rhythm but the reason and without reason, without the passion of the player who never gets the true spotlight, all may be lost in the cacophony of sound and pleasure.
For British band Marillion, a group with five members who in each of their own way are true masters of the defining appeal of their chosen instruments, and who together arguably rival any of the great bands of the last thirty years, the heartbeat may be heard stamped throughout each studio album but it is seeing it in the flesh where the appreciation for the man behind the skins and cymbals really brings it home.
Ian Mosley gets given great accolades from the sheer abundance of Marillion fans world-wide and yet where other books have perhaps arguably focused on the man who keeps the band’s heart pumping like a stallion infused with grace, Mark Pardy’s look at the style and creativity in the guide to the unique feel that is Ian Mosley: Marillion’s Heartbeat, overflows from behind a rig that would make any right-minded frustrated drummer look upon with envious and undiluted jealousy.
Ian joined the band in 1984 and immediately caught the attention of fans with his style of play on tracks such as the terrific Assassing, Punch and Judy and the album title track Fugazi and over the course of the following decades has captured the imagination, just as much as any drummer in the world of Rock.
What makes the book so fascinating, even to those with very little appreciation for the technical ability that goes into keeping a band on time is the way that Mark Pardy has laid out the skeleton analysis like figure of some of the songs, ranging from the band’s biggest U.K. hit Kayleigh to the patterning of After Me and the long beautiful groove that flows from the likes of Incommunicado and Slainte Mhath from 1987’s Clutching At Straws album. Uniquely for a book or guide to the world of the instrument, Mark Pardy’s analysis benefits and is aided by Ian Mosley’s contribution but also by the expert photography of Andy Wright. Mr. Wright, who also captured the band in their glory during the process of the outstanding book 9:30 to Filmore and whose photography was used in the band’s 17th studio album Sounds That Can’t Be Made, certainly has an eye for the unseen, the tantalising alien like beauty that is the bare bones of a drum kit. For many, the drum kit may hold an aural fixation but thanks to Andy Wright, the mechanism, the structure of metal alloy and finely tuned apparatus can be seen as important as the surgeon’s knife, both needing resolve and diligence to be mastered fully.
Even if not into the technical aspects that make an album what it is, Mark Pardy’s A Guide to the unique style of Ian Mosley: Marillion’s Heartbeat is worth delving into and absorbing. It is a universal truth that a sound made is captured somewhere in the beat of a strong heart, for Ian Mosley is that heart in a group that has been a vital organ to so many for over thirty years.
Ian D. Hall