OCEANLINER

Passport's albums always reflect the time in which they were released. Since Oceanliner came out in 1980, they are already working with two strikes against them. Most of this album is made up of early 80s pop/dance music with jazz and funk overtones, and very little of it is memorable.

Side one opens with a couple of bouncy Euro synth-pop numbers that feature Doldinger playing the Lyricon, a synth-horn instrument that doesn't sound near as good as his saxophone. Ancient Saga is an instrumental 80s metal hair ballad complete with a "soaring" guitar solo, to his credit Kevin Mulligan is a very good guitarist. Side one closes with Oceanliner, a funk-dance number that almost redeems this side except for the trendy vocoder vocals. This song features a nice solo on the Tenor sax from Klaus.

Side two opens with another vocoder driven dance number that features the considerable skills of bassist Dieter Petereit. Its too bad Pasport didn't have Dieter back when they were playing fusion, he would have been a big asset. This song is followed by a bland AOR vocal ballad and then things finally get interesting as the band makes a sharp left turn for the rest of the album. Bassride is a mellow spacey jazz number that features a lengthy Jacoesque solo from Dieter. Scope opens with some odd synth or Lyricon and then heads for an Ornette Coleman style wandering melody free-jazz jam that is actually pretty good. The album closes with Seaside, which is a pleasant pop Reggae tune that sounds fresh after the big freakout on Scope.

If you actually like early 80s dance music then you might stand a chance of enjoying this album. If there had been more songs on here like Scope, this would have been a classic.

Klaus Doldinger (from some moment of time "Passport" is just his brand-name used for tagging of him and different supporting musicians) never was very experimental or unexpected musician. But if in early 70-s and even in 90-s he still could play attractive even if not very complex fusion, 80-s were a real disaster.

This album is illustration: music recorded is danceable polished synth-pop, even usual Klaus sax sound is transferred to faceless synth-horns. Melodies are simple, and even some funky bass groove in places can't help. Heavy moments possibly added as spices, but all elements are such a stereotypes!

To be honest, I prefer best Candy Dulfer compositions to what I found on this album! Soundtrack to endless touristic documentary or late evening local radio music from early 80-s.

Better avoid!