LONG DISTANCE VOYAGER

The Moody Blues took an unwelcome path with their record "Octave" toowards more straight and ordinary pop rock music. They did nice melodies and sung well but the music was quite uninteresting as well as the cover. Perhaps the band thought that prog was dead and a time for a new music had come. But, by some reason the change was wrong and the band went back to intriguing and comprehensive pop rock instead, and now they went back to have a lot of progressive elements there too. In 1981 they did their tenth record and the cover picture was marvelous again. Now it was painted in a light blue colour and we see a picturesque scene of the countryside. It's idyllic and beautiful and their most aesthetic since 1969. Now the line up had changed a bit. Michael Pinder was gone and former Yes member Patrick Moraz took over the keyboard tools. Moraz made the musical sound a bit different, more electronic and virtous but less mightly and churchlike. Beside Moraz there where no change: Hayward, Lodge, Thomas and Edge still hung around.

My favourite track on the album is "Painted smile" which is an idyllic piece which could be played on a vacation in the summer and I like the warm vocals and the rich background with circus feeling(8/10). The last track "Veteran cosmic rockers" is fast and rough and the vocals are mighty and sound almost like Greg Lake(8/10). The first "The Voice" is also fast and I do like the poppy swing(8/10) and "22.000 days" is well played, deep with great keyboards(8/10). These are the best tracks and the edgy "Gemini dream"(7/10), the poetic "Nervous"(7/10) and the spoken parenthesis "Reflective smile"(7/10) is also better than just good. Overall is the sound of this record mighty and it's music full of great details and even the not already mentioned tracks are beautiful, at least partially. Definitely The Moody Blues had gone in a good direction and took their music a step further. "Octave" doesn't fit in amongst their high quality records but "Long Distance Voyager" sure does it. I think it's one of my favourite Moody Blues records actually. Four stars!