Of their three albums, Home's The Alchemist is the most well known, in large part because it was a progressive rock concept album. Even as prog rock concept albums go, it's still pretty obscure, but it's bound to interest prog rock collectors as an elaborate recording with similarities to the music of some other, more famous British art rock bands of the period. To roughly summarize, The Alchemist is the story of a young boy given magical powers by a dying man, warning of and then saving his hometown from a catastrophe. The alchemist who acts as a hero of the story dies at the end, for good measure. In common with some other rock concept albums of the period, then, it's a fanciful thread upon which to hang a record. The music integrates some British folkiness with blends of proficient versatile guitar (by Laurie Wisefield), then-futuristic keyboard sounds (by non-member Jimmy Anderson), and passages that range in mood from the pastoral to the verging-on-bombastic. Some spiraling guitar lines in particular recall Steve Howe's work, and while the ambition is admirable and the playing accomplished, the vocals are less impressive. Too, the songs are not individually memorable in the way that tunes from concept albums by the Who, or tunes from non-concept albums by the likes of Yes and Genesis, were. The CD reissue on Esoteric adds historical liner notes, both sides of a non-LP 1974 single, and a previously unreleased track. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi

1		School Days
2		The Old Man Dying
3		Time Passes By
4		The Old Man Calling
5		The Disaster
6		The Sun's Revenge
7		A Secret to Keep
8		The Brass Band Played
9		Rejoicing
10		The Disaster Returns
11		The Death of the Alchemist
12		The Alchemist

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