DUKES OF THE ORIENT
Freak Show FRONTIERS
Asia offshoot’s stumbling attempt to resurrect that band’s legacy.
Those with good memories will recall the Great Asia Wars that flared after the AOR-prog kingpins slid off the charts and splintered apart. In 1991, keyboard player Geoff Downes brought the franchise spluttering back to life with singer John Payne to make the unremarkable Aqua album. Painful wrangles over the Asia brand followed, but now the dust has settled, the Dukes Of The Orient are proclaiming themselves “the legitimate successors of John Payne’s Asia”.