ARIA, special edition (E)

Since Asia joined Inside Out, the record label decided to release previous albums as remastered editions with bonus material. Aria, from 1994, with its beautiful cover by Roger Dean, is one of their melodic and very catchy AOR-albums. The sound quality is slightly enhanced - and therefore amazingly clear - and this cd contains three bonus tracks: Reality, a typical melodic Asia-track that was already available on Archives I, an acoustic version of Military Man and Anytime as a multimedia video. The whole album contains superb AOR-songs and really good arrangements. The vocals, the choirs, the choruses and so on seem all to fall in place. There's no week spot on Aria and every detail is carefully selected. For me the highlights are the bombastic choir and melodies on Enough’s Enough. This album features Al Pitrelli on guitars and Michael Sturgis on drums besides of course Geoff Downes (keyboards, background vocals) and John Payne​ (vocals, bass).