ISLAND

The first single by Renaissance, released in 1970. The A-side is an edited version of the song Island taken from the band's superb self-titled debut album, and the B-side is a non-album track called The Sea. Both tracks have been included as bonus tracks on some CD re-issues of the debut album.

The single edit of Island is just over three and a half minutes long, while the original album version is six minutes long. The edit simply fades out, just before the interesting instrumental part - so, at least for me, it is clear that the longer album version is far superior.

The Sea is a nice little song that was perhaps an inspiration for the similarly titled Sounds of the Sea on Prologue, by the later line-up of Renaissance. It is considerably less adventurous compared to the tracks that made up the album, but it works well enough as a single B-side.