Reviewed by ProgCat on 25 Oct 2008

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This is the Australian group's second release - a 2-cd with 15 songs of variable quality. The label Insideout describes the album as influenced by Flower Kings, Van der Graaf Generator, King Crimson and (?)Men at work. This reviewer cannot hear any traces of neither Van Der Graaf nor King Crimson. This is, however,an amigious 2nd album that mingles lots of styles like prog, world, aor,  pop, rock and jazz.
There are too many songs to review them all. Here are,however, some reflections from ProgCat:

CD 1 :

• Track 1: The Garden 22:35 starts out as ethnic world music. After some 2 minutes a more prog feel takes over and references may be Magic Pie and Transatlantic. In the middle of this long opus there's a change and a flamenco guitar is introducing a jazz direction and later on an aor sound. After 16 minutes the world influence returns like at the start of the song. Now, however, a Pink Floyd influence can be heard. Strong vocal performances.
• Track 3: Angeliqua 9:50 -starts with heavenly voices by Shireen Khemlani. - A kind of Dead can Dance feel that (unfortunately) moves over to straight AOR. At the end a more heavy rock sound saves the track.
• Track 4: Here l am 3:19 - This is the group's pop song.
• Track 5: l wish l could fly 6:51 - a mellow soundtrack-like song with a Steve Hackett-like acc.guitar being accompanied by the flutes of Mike Stewart and with an orchestral backing. Good vocal parts by Shireen Khemlani. Nice but slightly boring.
• Track 6: Inside the power 4:31 - an ordinary poprock song which didn't impress much. A heavy guitar rocking in the background makes a change.

Cd 2:

• Track 1: Journey's friend 16:28 - a nice track that mingles lots of styles from pop,rock,jazz &; prog. The track starts very much out like a Magic Pie song. Catchy guitar riffs here and strong vocals by Mark Trueack & Sean Timms; Unitopia's two frontmen. After some 5 minutes the guys get into the jazz section with sax and jazzy piano until suddenly a heavy Magic Pie-like guitar attack strikes. A relief to get rid of the jazzy section in a progrock album. The vocal parts that follows makes another interesting direction. It starts out with a treated voice and merges over to a heavy-rock attack that ceases with a sound of a clarinet by Mike Stewart. This track is too long and ProgCat feels it well could have knocked off around 4-5 minutes.
• Tracks 2 & 3 show an AOR side which is pretty boring. Chris Rea comes to mind.
• Track 7: Don't give up on love 7:49 - a song with good melody and variation as well as good vocals and some excellent keyboard work by Sean Timms.

Also to be mentioned is a great cover by Ed Unitsky - http://www.edunitsky.net/albums.htm (has made covers for Tangent, Flower Kings, Manning, Tomas Bodin).

All in all, The Garden is an album with lots of quality. The great variety of styles shows great musicianship, however, makes the album too diverse and contributes to a lack of conformity and clear direction.
This 2-CD set has one long opus on each disc (always a good thing in prog) and these,  together with a few of the other best tracks,  would have made it to an outstanding good single cd.  As a 2-CD set with this material it becomes too much for ProgCat.  If you, however, like a diversity of styles, prog, world jazz AOR and straight rock this may be right on target for you.

Reviewed by Marc on 29 Oct 2008

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I agree with ProgCat that The Garden is a very diverse album. On the other hand my reaction to this double album by Australia's Unitopia is more enthousiastic than his. In my opinion, there are many incredible prog tracks on this album (not the least being the two epic tracks). This material is as good as some of the best stuff by bands like The Flower Kings and Spock's Beard. Even more, Unitopia adds a modern flare to the classic sound that I feel helps take this genre further.

Also present on The Garden are a good number of radio friendly tracks that kind of make me think of a band called Elbow. These songs are also very good, but do offer a different mood compared to the proggier pieces. Perhaps this is why ProgCat found the album to be a bit too much for him. Personnally I like all the material on The Garden, but the alternance of Prog and non-Prog pieces does somewhat take me out of my comfort zone. My way of avoiding this, is to change the order of the tracks and in fact treat The Garden as two distinct albums. A band like Sylvan recently decided to put out two CDs of music coming from a unique recording session, because the material was very diverse. Opeth did the same thing a few years ago.

This being said, I think that what really matters is the quality of the music, and Unitopia as reached a level not attained by many Prog bands of today. The Garden gets my highest recommendation. How you listen to this album will be your own choice... but check this music out. You certainly won't regret it.