Zee – Identity (1984)

Zee consisted of Pink Floyd's keyboardist Richard Wright and Dave Harris, who had been a member of the band Fashion. Identity was the only album the duo released, and if I'm honest I don't think the world has missed out on too much by the lack of more releases. It's not a very good album.

The reason I bought the album was of course the presence of Richard Wright. As a fan of Pink Floyd I got hopes that it would be a really groovy album when I found it cheap in a record store, somewhere in Uppsala. But these hopes were extinguished fairly quickly when I listened to it the first time. There is a clear 80s sound, mainly thanks to heavy use of the synthezeiser Fairlight CMI. And I guess the songs themselves aren't that good, either, disregarding the sound. Now, I probably have somewhat higher demands / expectations since Richard Wright is one of the creators, which perhaps makes my review a little unfair. I guess you can say it's pretty ordinary 80s pop.

Some songs have the seed to be more interesting, such as Strange Rhythm and Voices, but unfortunately the sound is not to my taste and largely destroys the listening experience. Richard Wright himself has called the album a mistake that should never have been released.

So this record has been extremely unplayed in my record collection and probalby will remain so. Nevertheless, I'm still glad to own it, since from a collector's perspective most stuff associated with Pink Floyd is interesting to own. The cover is also among one of the more ugly in the collection, they also have persisted in putting two dots over each and every vowel in the song titles which don't make things better. But maybe as a Swede I should feel honored (since the letters å,ä and ö belong to our alphabet. Ü is german, though).

Tracklist

Side A

1. Confusion 4:17
2. Voices 6:21
3. Private person 3:36
4. Strange Rhythm 6:36

Side B

1. Cuts Like A Diamond 5:36
2. By Touching 5:39
3. How Do You Do It 4:45
4. Seems We Were Dreaming 4:57