He wanted to be able to finally make a record that would feature him as a real solid composer, that would not just keep repeating the same lightning-speed licks over and over again. An intentional move, of course whereas I wouldn’t want to accuse Alvin of sharing the famous “guitar hero complex” that managed to overtake such six-string greats as Clapton and Jeff Beck in the early Seventies, it’s at least clear that on A Space In Time the man was keen on cutting out the crap and fully concentrating on the melodies and real musical substance. One thing strikes you immediately as you let all the tracks flow through your mind, one by one – where’s the fingerflashing? This sounds nothing like what we’ve grown to expect from the band because the main trademark element of the sound, Alvin’s blazing speedy chops, are completely missing. Alvin’s guitar is not idle either and his songwriting reached a peak at this time – never to be surpassed again. Unarguably the band’s strongest and most consistent effort since the Ssssh days, A Space In Time continues the line of Watt in its heavy use of synthesizers and special effects, but this time the members probably took out some time to make these thingamajigs actually work. Still, if there ever was a period in which they were real close to embodying some “progressive” tendencies, it was this fall of 1971, with this extremely strange, un-Ten Years After-like album, and this really great bunch of songs, with hardly a major stinker in among all the melodies.
TEN YEARS AFTER SPACE IN TIME FULL ALBUM MAC
Despite all the hype, Ten Years After could never have earned the title of a “prog-rock” band: sometimes they are mistakenly lumped in with the movement, but Alvin and Co.’s ambitions never really amounted that high – for the most part, they were just hardcore blues rockers with a slight experimental edge, to distinguish them from colleagues like early Fleetwood Mac or Free.
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