[5][6] The album contained a healthy mixture of various styles of progressive blues and “The Modern Alchemist” displayed the jazz influence and saxophone skills of Jack Lancaster.

‘Dear Jill’ (a favourite of mine to this day) was the next track we laid down and the nice thing about it was that by double-tracking the guitar, which was an Eko 12-string with only 9–10 strings on it (depending on my mood or how many strings I could afford on the day) it sounded akin to a modern chorus effect pedal which, coupled with Jack’s haunting soprano sax, made it into a solid stand up song.

It was featured in Cameron Crowe’s movie Almost Famous as part of the background music to reflect the theme and time of the film.About “See My Way”, he comments: “It was a solid two days work to get it just how we felt it should be with all the odd changes of tempo and feel, i.e. the section that sounds like Ravel’s Boléro ... That song didn’t go on the UK version of Ahead Rings Out, but instead the powers that be decided in their wisdom to put it on the USA version and left it until we recorded the second album, Getting to This.” He described “The Modern Alchemist” as “a great composition of Jack Lancaster’s that brought a mixture of hard hybrid jazz-rock flavour to the album.”[8] Melody Maker stated, "An excellent debut with lots of exciting music.

The album has direction and thought and gives a great deal of hope for the future of the often maligned progressive pop scene.

"[12] New Musical Express wrote, "Hooting grunting blues mingled with snorts of jazz adds up to an excellent debut album from one of our most promising groups.