Planets & Time To Turn

I haven't been buying much music recently - most unusually - other than the monthly eMusic downloads. Mainly because there's been nothing new recently that has caught my eye. So I decided to splash out and start picking up some of the music I've only got on scratchy vinyl or cassette. This tends to be the stuff I listened to a lot in college - so much so in fact that it kind of got burned into my brain. Which is part of the reason why I've never bothered buying it - it had become so familiar it wasn't really necessary.

So here are two albums by a German band called Eloy. They ran throughout the seventies and early eighties and also had brief revivals in the nineties (a new album with a lot of original members in 1998). Remastered copies of their albums have been released by EMI over the last few years (these two are from 2005) however their website hasn't been updated since 2003. As with a number of european (prog) rock bands, when listening to them for the first time you notice a lot of similarities with the more well known names like Yes and Pink Floyd, however they do have a charm all of their own. These two are from their late phase (81,82) when they'd had an almost complete change of lineup and moved from the guitar + hammond organ basis to a much more electronic style, but also with a real string section in places.

Yes, in fact this is part one and two of a double concept album about an alien race on the planet Salta - but really, who listens to the lyrics anyway? The music mixes lush electronic (and real) orchestral sections with more traditional rock based songs with a bit of an anthemic feel. They benefit greatly from a superb bass player who had been with them for some years and has a really fluid style that bounces along all the time and really drives the pulse of the faster numbers. Standout tracks? Maybe Queen of the Night and Carried By Cosmic Winds from Planets. The last 30 seconds of Carried... (and the album) is a lovely snippet which says to be continued.... From Time to Turn, the opening track Through A Somber Galaxy for its pulsing bass line.

Special attractions of these releases are that they include the original artwork rather than the Rodney Matthews versions previously released in the UK. Actually the Matthews versions are probably better but I haven't seen these ones before - and anyway they all lose out to being CD sized. Also there is one track I'd never heard before on Time To Turn, Magic Mirrors which for some reason on all UK versions had been replaced by a track from the album that preceded these two, Colours. The story of Planets is printed in the booklet, however the history of the band and the story of the sequel are only in German. Lastly both discs feature Copy Control technology which appears to have zero affect on my ability to rip them.