SGR

I actually got myself an original LP pressing of A Farewell to Kings at an antique store last year. Great album. Not the biggest Rush fan myself, but 2112 and Moving Pictures are great too.

Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes the popular choice is the popular choice for a good reason.

Trollheart

Oh dear. You are not going to be a happy lady then when I get to it...

Ah for ****'s sake! I have 2112, Caress, Farewell, Hemispheres, Exit.. Stage Left and All the World's a Stage all on vinyl! Original too, not ****ing re-issues. Now I feel old(er)! Hey! Maybe I can make a buck?

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Album title: Ocean
Artist: Eloy
Nationality: German
Sub-genre: Psychedelic/Space Rock***
Year: 1977
Position on list for that year: 5
Chronology: 6 of 20
Familiarity with artist: 4
Familiarity with album: 1
Gold Rated track(s): None
Silver Rated track(s): None
Wooden Rated track(s): None
Comments: I’ve a strange relationship with Eloy. Goes back to my youth (yes yes shut up I was young once you know) when I used to hang around a record store called The Sound Cellar. You could go there and more or less listen to new music for the day, but in the end Tommy, who ran the place, usually tried to collar you to buy something. No such thing as a free lunch, this ain’t a library etc. So when he asked me what I liked I told him progressive rock and he foisted Eloy’s Performance on me. I had never heard of them, but he was good for new recommendations in a time before the internet, and I thought why not? So I bought it and brought it home, played it, was underwhelmed. I assumed Eloy were some new band, didn’t know they’ve been going since the sixties. I took a chance on their follow-up, Metromania, and thoroughly disliked it, so that was Eloy for me.

Since then I’ve heard a few tracks on playlists, though only one full album, which I think I did for the history of prog journal - maybe Floating? Not sure - and it was meh, okay but nothing great, as have been the tracks I’ve heard. So it’s not like I don’t like them, but I just don’t think much of them. They’ve yet to write something, or at least I have to hear something I really like. That said, my own personal preferences don’t necessarily matter here, as this is rated very highly on the list for 1977, but I’m just putting my own experience of the band in context. This is another very short album, with a mere four tracks, so I guess you could say it’s the closest since Rush to a true prog rock album in terms of track lengths. Whether it will be a revelation, a borefest or another meh, I guess we’ll see.

Sort of a Floydy opening with some good bass work and a kind of dramatic feel to “Poseidon’s Creation”, one of the longer tracks at just short of twelve minutes. Good boogie swinging guitar riff now and then the vocal comes in. You know, it’s okay but the usual problem for me with Eloy, just doesn’t hold my attention. A twelve-minute track is over and I can’t even remember it when the second one begins. It’s slower, with hollow percussion and lush synth with a low-key vocal, and it’s called “Incarnation of the Logos”, but they apparently don’t last long because the next track is called “Decay of the Logos”, and no, I don’t know what a logo is (other than in the advertising sense, which I doubt is the case here) and no I don’t care. Both these tracks run for just over eight minutes, which is at least mildly interesting, as you can say, or pretend, that these logos lived for as long as they died. Or something. Man I’m bored. You noticed, did you?

All right, let’s try to concentrate here. There’s a pretty bitchin’ keyboard solo that kind of reminds me of Kraftwerk at their height, with a lovely pulsing bass line and I don’t know, but it seems once the vocal comes in I lose interest. Maybe they’d be better - for me anyway - if Eloy were an instrumental band? Oh well, as Homer Simpson once noted, wishing won’t make it so, and we work with what we have. But I can’t get excited or even vaguely invested in the vocal or the lyric. I really don’t care what it’s about. I repeat though, the keyboard line is great. The sister track, as it were, “Decay of the Logos”, I would expect to be a slower, more sombre affair. Is it? Well there’s a dark bassy opening (though I think it’s on guitar) and as you might imagine there would be, a sense of impending doom and an ominous feel about the piece, but then it breaks into a rocky sort of theme and I really no longer get that sense of something coming to an end. Maybe it’s not meant to signify that. Again, I really don’t care.

The final track is the longest, and the one with the weirdest title. “Atlantis’ Agony at June 5th - 8498 13:15 Gregorian Earthtime” (told you it was weird, didn’t I?) runs for fifteen and a half minutes, and starts out with a dark, spoken piece which possibly would be more comfortable on a power metal album, but it gets going then with a sort of ambient opening with wind and effects and all the usual stuff that you kind of expect on a track of this length. Oh, himself is back with some more speech. I expect this is a concept album, built perhaps around the legend of Atlantis or something, but I can’t be bothered to look it up. I’m just that disinterested. It’s a third of the way through now and I have to say not much has happened. It’s not that I’m not listening: I am. But there just isn’t too much to listen to. I suppose it’s building up, but it’s sure taking its time. The voice keeps talking over a kind of swirly synth but it’s not doing much for me.

Some percussion coming in now and an actual vocal, but we’re halfway through and I’m all the way through with this. It hasn’t done anything to help me change my view of Eloy. I’m still bored stupid by them. Sorry. Bored intelligent then. The operative word is bored. And I am. Bored, that is. Very bored.

Personal Rating: 4

*** I don’t agree with this classification though: Eloy to me, even if boring, are still symphonic prog.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI8b6GQ5C80

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018