MOONMADNESS

This IS Camel! I just cannot get enough of this album and each time I hear it, the album still sounds fresh. I was brought up listening to Camel and my first taste was Mirage which is a fantastic album. The Big 3: Mirage, Snow Goose & Moonmadness are the band's best and most incredible music pieces ever made. Sadly this would be the last one before there was a disturbance in the Force and Andy Ward, wanting to be more jazzy, insisted Doug Ferguson (bass) had to go. Doug was the quiet one, the peace maker, the one who handled most of the business for the group. Bardens and Latimer would later say it was a big mistake. I think it was a massive tragedy to break this band up just as they put out what could be the absolute pinnacle of their work.

Latimer and Bardens retired to a retreat place and wrote this album. It consists of mostly instrumental passages. They decide that rather than cave into the record company's desire for hit singles they wrote 4 of the songs each one as a picture of each member of the group: "Air Born" for Andrew Latimer, "Chord Change" for Peter Bardens, "Another Night" for Doug Ferguson, and "Lunar Sea" for Andy Ward. It is ingenious and knowing the personalities of each member, the songs really do represent them well. By this time the band were very comfortable and confident in their playing and it is obvious here. Each track is filled with a great deal of rich textures and interplay. It is a thinking person's album. Slapping on a pair of good headphones and closing your eyes sends your mind on a journey.

My favorites are all of the songs but the ones that really display their best are Song Within a Song, Another Night and Lunar Sea. The latter is explosive and really stands out as one of the best tracks Camel ever did. As usual the solo pairing with guitar and keys is great. Camel just is not Camel without Peter Bardens in my opinion. His playing and sound are as Camel as Latimer's guitar playing. I rarely give a 5 for anything but this album is great start to finish and I can see nothing to complain about. The only thing that would make it better would be to have them remix this album into the new 5.1 stereo format that Steven Wilson has done for several prog bands.