A review by WIll Friedwald of Nektar's Performance at The Iridium NYC - New York City Article

Nektar's music wasn’t like one of the Grateful Dead’s or some similar “jam” band’s notion of jazz-influenced improvisation, but rather these long tracks were rather like a film soundtrack that was, in fact, an entire audio “movie” unto itself. You didn’t listen to Nektar for the individual songs, you listened for the overall experience of the whole track; to use a contemporary cliche, it was all about the journey that they took you on.

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Their own journey has been ongoing since 1969 when a collective of English musicians and visual artists came together in Germany. They’ve been around in some form or other, for the most part, ever since, always with at least one or more of the founding members present. Longtime fans were overjoyed when nearly all the surviving founders - bassist Derek "Mo" Moore, drummer Ron Howden, Mick Brockett doing special visual effects, along with guitarist Ryche Chlanda (who first joined in 1978) - re-united a few years ago to hit the road once more. Mr. Moore serves as the band’s on-stage spokesman in the current edition, which has the unique instrumentation of two fender bassists, and yet he does relatively little talking - since the band’s “songs” are so long, and so self-sufficient (no explanation is necessary) there’s not much need for a lot of chatter.

Mr. Moore’s most memorable anecdote on Thursday evening's show at The Iridium concerned the making of what became their most famous album. In 1973, an independent German label called Bacilus, ensconced the band in a studio in Oxfordshire and gave them what amounted to a budget that was measured in time rather than money: they were informed that they had all five days to record whatever they wanted; since that timespan included the nights as well as the days, the Nektarians decided to power through those 120 hours with as little sleep as possible. They emerged, bleary-eyed, almost a week later with what became Remember the Future. That was their first release to break the American market, and despite being a single 40-minute track, landed on the album charts. It’s still verywell-remembered: virtually everybody in The Iridium Thursday night was humming it word-for-word, and tapping along with it beat-for-beat. The single “track’ encompasses multitudes, there are at least ten subsections that qualify as individual numbers - and again, the packed house at the Iridium seemed to be anticipating every transition from one section to another, from the vocal harmony portions to the rather baroque-style instrumentals. This is “prog rock,” not only in the sense of “progressive,” but also “programmatic,” meaning that, as everyone who saw Fantasia well remembers, it tells a story, there’s a continual narrative from start-to-finish.

The band also gave us a treat in a preview of their new album - they’re been surprisingly busy over the last ten years - The Other Side, which is set to be released next week. Judging by what they played at the Iridium and the advance tracks on Apple music, it sounds like Nektar is sweeter than ever - they have to be the only band extant that can play a single song for 40 minutes and leave you wanting more.

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