Antony apparently still had some music left and I understand that, because he initially opted for an album with more vocal tracks so that various instrumental pieces had to be sacrificed, well, had to, it was more of a well-considered choice. There are also a lot of guest singers and musicians active on the regular album and of course they have taken some space away from his regular band. As mentioned in my review of Omni, I love side B, to speak in vinyl terms, a bit more than Side A and that's mainly because I miss some instrumental fireworks between the vocal pieces. Well, that's solved now, because there are a number of really beautiful tracks on this additional album Omni, A Shuffle of Fate (The working Tapes) that would have fitted perfectly into the overall concept of Omni. There is also a song with vocals on this album and they are provided by Antony himself and it is called A Shuffle of Fate, so the subtitle is hereby explained.

The great thing about this album is that guitarist Max Velychko gets much more room to show his beautiful guitar work, because he is a very gifted guitarist. Of course, Michel St-Pere's guitar solos on the regular album are fantastic, but Max also plays really beautifully, both on acoustic and electric guitar. Just listen to The Wake of the Light, The Shadow dances or the already mentioned A Shuffle of Fate. Flutist John Hackett is also present and plays his dreamy and fitting parts.

As a kind of bonus, we also get to hear an entirely instrumental Omni Suite of almost twenty minutes. Wow, this really is a beautiful piece of instrumental prog of the highest order. Many keys and guitar solos are interspersed with heavenly melodies and tasteful piano passages. And let’s not forget the beautiful violin parts by Daniel Ilyin. I don't really miss the vocals and that doesn't happen often I can tell you.

This album is not just an addition to Omni but shows how this album has grown and yet Kalugin's choices not to use certain pieces are difficult for me to understand. I think this is due to the fact that he had an LP format in mind and was therefore bound to the approximately forty minutes that usually fit on it. That requires the necessary cutting.

I'm going to make an Omni total for myself and I'm going to place some pieces of this album between the already existing tracks to try to establish a bit more balance between instrumental and vocal pieces. I would have liked to have had an hour-long album where the pieces from this album were used because they are so good. Anyway, we have to respect Antony's choices and the advantage is that we have another great album. Most of this album is already for sale digitally and the CD version will be released somewhere in early November but can already be pre-ordered, and I would say, do so! Also take a look at the Antony’s bandcamp page because there is a lot of great stuff to order with all kinds of bonus options. This man just deserves that because he is a worthy representative of the kind of music that many of us love so much.

A word about the cover, which is a derivative of the cover of Omni and that was already very nice.

Omni rules (2025 at least)

Music 90

Cover 90