COLOURS

A new decade, a new lineup, with Frank Bornemann on guitar and vocals, Klaus-Peter Maziol (who stayed on from the previous lineup) on bass, Hannes Folberth on keyboards, Hannes Arkona on guitars, and British born drummer Jim McGillivray. This marked a new direction for the band, a more accessible, direct approach in their music. The guitars tend to be heavier, the keyboards aren't so drench in atmosphere as Detlev Schmidtchen had. Still, this is the sound of the band reluctant to enter the 1980s (and that holds true with their following two albums, "Planets" and "Time to Turn"), and Folberth sticks with strictly '70s keyboards here (but more early '80s keyboards will enter the setup after this album) like Mini Moog, string synths, Hohner Clavinet, and Hammond organ.

The album opens up with "Horizons", complete with clavinet and female chorus, with quote from YES' "Tales From Topographic Oceans" in the lyrics. "Child Migration", "Giant", "Silhouette", and "Gallery" all show the more straighforward direction, a lot of this reminding me of the ALAN PARSONS PROJECT. Some of this music borders on AOR. "Sunset" is an instrumental, synth dominated piece with spacy Moog.

To me, I found the album a bit repetitive, so I have a hard time understanding what all the fuss is (I find "Ocean" and "Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes" to be better albums, and although I might be in a minority here, I find their following effort, "Planets" a better album), but it's still not a bad album. It's still way better than what most other prog bands were giving us in 1980 (such as GENESIS' "Duke", or better yet, TRIUMVIRAT's "Russian Roulette").