I really enjoy "Magic Lantern" too, with nice guitar parts. Very melodic with a climax.
I have always liked most of Edgar's solo works.
I think "Epsilon in Malaysian Pale" and "Stuntman" are better than many TD albums.
The ones which is maybe a bit too "diluted" is "Macula Transfer".
Aqua is not everybody's taste of course but I've always liked it... I think it's more accessble than "Zeit" for instance. and I love water sounds, which explains maybe why I never thought the title track was too long or too "static", or whatever. I love music without rhythm, or let's say without percussive rhythm, anyway.
"Kamikaze 1989" isn't my favourite either. But it's incidental music...
"Ages" has got fantastic moments, sometimes tracks are stretched out a little bit to much yet. Like "Metropolis". It could have been slighlty shorter and indeed that is what Edgar did on his reworking of the album onto one CD only. Yet, I knew this album for some any years that it seems very strange to me to have a couple of edited songs plus one missing and a different running order.
Like you, I cannot understand why TD does not play some Edgar solo compositions.... Some are so excellent, much better than some of the tracks they choose for ther setlist.
I mean "Epsilon in Malaysian Pale", "Stuntman" or "Drunken Mozart in the Desert" could have been on some TD album and they would have been rated as highlights, I'm sure.
A pity Edgar does not seem willing to come back to these abums... and a shame that "Epsilon" is not even excerpted on the live album, especially given its title !!!!!! Has anybody ever commented on that ? I really don't get that at all !
I have planned to do a whole overview of Edgar solo albums in my fanzine for some time and that's hopefully for next term or next June. I preferred to start the history of TD, in the end, and I wrote about the first 20 years of the band, for a start.