I also could have done a story on this Australian band, but after listening to their first 2, out of the 3 they cut, I thought it was only the release of their 3rd album ‘Race’ that should bother the AOR fans. In 1984 PSEUDO ECHO released the debut album ‘Autumnal park’, which was followed one year later with the release of ‘Love an adventure’.
 

Both releases are pretty worthless, as they contain some poppy poprock with elements of new wave in a way bands like Duran Duran and Platinum Blonde bothered us for years. I think there aren’t that many AOR fans that would care about this kind of music. After ‘Love an adventure’ a lot of things happened to the band and it took more than 4 years for the band to release a new album. And it was worth the wait all the way, I can guarantee you!
 

In 1989, PSEUDO ECHO released their third album titled ‘Race’. With the release of this album, things became quite interesting for the AOR fan. ‘Race’ was filled with classic 80’s AOR that sounded quite Canadian. There are clear similarities to bands like HONEYMOON SUITE, the first HAREM SCAREM, HAYWIRE, BYSTANDER and also you may pick up some FM or STRANGEWAYS references.
 

Mentioning such big AOR bands, this can only be a classic. And that’s what I would call this album: an AOR classic that is pretty unknown among the AOR fans. I don’t know why the band changed their music direction into this type of great AOR, but I am glad they did. Maybe it is due to the fact that co-producers/mixers like Bob Clearmountain, Brian Malouf and Paul Lani helped the band on ‘Race’. 3 well-known names in the AOR scene. Not one track is weak on ‘Race’.
 

The CD contains 10 great AOR tracks, from the opener “Fooled again” till the closing track “Eye of the storm”, you can hear all the ingredients and standards that an AOR fan likes to hear in an AOR band. Almost every song has a brilliant hookline too! What more do you need! PSEUDO ECHO featured the brothers James (on keyboards) and Vince Leigh (on drums), Perre Gigliotti (on bass) and Brian Canham (on lead vocals and guitars. They all wrote together their own songs, and no outside writer helped them.
 

Basically, you get 7 uptempo AOR rockers (“Fooled again”, “Over tomorrow”, “Imagination”, “Don’t you forget”, “Runaways”, “Take on the world” and “Eye of the storm”), 1 short instrumental (“Metropolis”) and 2 fantastic semi-AOR ballads (“Caught” and “Searching for a glory”). Those 2 semi-AOR ballads “Caught” (similar in style to early FM mixed with early STRANGEWAYS) and “Searching for a glory” (a bit like ROXUS on their ‘Nightstreet’ album) are definitely the best tracks and are classic AOR for sure.
 

The rockers are great too, the best ones being “Eye of the storm” and “Over tomorrow” that can without any doubts, easily be compared to HONEYMOON SUITE in their heydays! The guitars, keys and backing vocals on the whole album sound just too perfect and that’s where the sad story comes to an end. Because just when things became interesting for the AOR fan, PSEUDO ECHO split and the incredible album ‘Race’ never had a follow-up.
 

The members ended up in new bands and sadly new music styles. Only in 1995 we were surprised by a new release of PSEUDO ECHO, but unfortunately this was a ‘best of’ album, not including any unreleased tracks. Still there are some unreleased tracks left, that were recorded between their 1985 album and their ‘Race’ album, if they sound like any of the ‘Race’ material, I don’t know, but they can be interesting, I guess. Maybe someday this ‘lost album’ will eventually be released.
 

What I do know is that there were 3 singles released in Australia of the CD ‘Race”, namely “Fooled again”, “Over tomorrow” and “Eye of the storm”/”Don’t you forget”. From these 3 CD-singles, only “Over tomorrow” is interesting to go out and look for, because this CD-single contains 2 unreleased tracks titled “Wings” and “Nothing to say”, I assume these are AOR orientated tracks.
 

Last words I can add to this review are that every AOR fan must have this ‘Race’ album of PSEUDO ECHO in their collection, if not, grab a copy today! The CD is easy to get, although it didn’t get an official release in some countries.