Nick Mason & Rick Fenn – Profiles (1985)

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Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and ex-10cc and Mike Oldfield guitarist Rick Fenn released the album Profiles in August of 1985.
At the time of this album’s creation, Pink Floyd had disbanded due to the infighting between Floyd bass player/singer Roger Waters and singer/guitarist David Gilmour. Nick was the last of the four classic PF members to come out with a sophomore solo effort as Gilmour, Waters and keyboard player (the late) Richard Wright each released their second solo efforts in 1984 although Wright’s was as part of a duo called Zee which made only one album (an .
Profiles, like 1981’s Fictitious Sports, was Nick Mason collaborating with another artist and this time it is Rick Fenn (who has worked with Mike Oldfield and in a later incarnation of 10CC (a band that WWE/WWF wrestler Chris Jericho called “Pink Floyd without the b*lls”)) and created an album that is very good but then at the same time hard to top Fictitious Sports IMHO (as I found out when I first got the Profiles CD in December of 1994 on the Columbia/CBS label USED). All of the tunes are written by Mason and Fenn but are helped out on the two songs with vocals by one time UFO keyboard player Danny Peyronel.
The first of the two tracks with lead vocals was the album’s single “Lie For a Lie” (penned by Mason/Fenn/Peyronel) which featured Nick’s Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour on lead vocals and is the hands down the album’s best track. The other “Israel” (penned by Fenn and Peyronel) was sung by Peyronel himself and is also a great track (why did UFO let him go?!?)! These two songs are worth purchasing the album alone!
Then the rest of the album are all instrumental tracks. While “Malta”, “Black Ice”, “Mumbo Jumbo”, “Profiles Parts 1 and 2” and “Profiles Part 3′ are classic instrumentals, there is one OK instrumental “Rhoda” but the other three instrumentals “And the Address”, “Zip Code” and “At the End of the Day” are just either bad outtakes from a bad B-movie film score or just yawn inducing IMHO.
Profiles puttered out at #124 on Billboard album chart and like Fictitious Sports is currently out of print. I guess only Pink Floyd and 10cc fans bought the album.

It is almost entirely instrumental, save for two songs; “Lie for a Lie”, featuring Pink Floyd singer and guitarist David Gilmour with singer Maggie Reilly, and “Israel”, sung by UFO keyboardist Danny Peyronel.

There was a time when we were considering it as an entirely instrumental album, but we had ‘Lie for a Lie’, which we wanted to go on, so we felt it needed another song to balance it out.

— Rick Fenn, 

I’ve certainly enjoyed working with Rick… I think it’s useful and important to change the people you work with. You get so stuck in certain patterns. You know: Roger will do this and Dave will do that and… well, you can go and make the tea, Nick!

— Nick Mason, 

 

Side one

  1. “Malta” – 6:00
  2. “Lie for a Lie” (Fenn, Mason, Danny Peyronel) – 3:16
  3. “Rhoda” – 3:22
  4. “Profiles Part 1/Profiles Part 2” – 9:58

Side two

  1. “Israel” (Fenn, Peyronel) – 3:30
  2. “And the Address” – 2:45
  3. “Mumbo Jumbo” – 3:53
  4. “Zip Code” – 3:05
  5. “Black Ice” – 3:37
  6. “At the End of the Day” – 2:35
  7. “Profiles Part 3” – 1:55

All tracks written by Rick Fenn and Nick Mason, except as noted.

 

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the Profiles liner notes.

Notes
Released: 29 July 1985
Recorded: 1984–85 Studio Britannia Row Studios, London
Genre: Art popsynth, pop instrumental, rock progressive
Length: 44:10

Label – Columbia Records

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