Future Memories Live On TV

Album Review

Most of this album is a direct-to-tape recording of a live 1979 performance for Swiss TV; the noise of moving camera dollies even creeps in at one point. Moraz opens with the side-long keyboard suite "Metamorphoses," and it's technically impressive to the extent that Moraz alone is performing a multi-instrumental work, but too structurally repetitive and sonically gimmicky to hold up as music — its value is purely as a demonstration of the early days of sequencing technology. The second half of Future Memories saves the album from being entirely a completist-only release, though. "Eastern Sundays" is an effectively moody merging of strangely menacing piano and resonating gongs, while the final upbeat soloing of "Black Silk" returns Moraz to his reliable and unadorned strengths as a jazz pianist. [Time Wave Music's 2006 reissue re-orders and splits the aforementioned three pieces and also includes the bonus track "Paris in a Bottle."]