SAHARA

Overlooked progressive rock band from Germany,later known as ''Sahara'',who's roots can be found in mid-60's,when they played beat music under the name ''The king and the subjects''.By 1969 they were renamed to SUBJECT ESQ and began playing a more complicated rock format.In 1972 their eponymous debut was released by Epic Label.

For a 1972 album,I would list it among the best of its time,as it was certainly one of the most varied,diverse and dynamic albums of the year,delivering a great amount of styles,instruments and tempos.There is plenty of tasteful driving flutes,heavy doses of Hammond organ,jazzy saxes here and there and even some harmonica touches to be found in this,making ''Subject esq'' a hard to categorize album,but on the other side one of the most interesting releases of the early progressive rock scene.Hard is also to fully decribe their sound,but a good simulation would if you combined the progressive side of BIRTH CONTROL with all these energetic and complex elements,meeting the vocal harmonies of YES in their 1970-1971 transition era and the elaborated playing of early 70's CARAVAN.So do not pass by this fantastic release,which would heal your ears and fill your time with some excellent music.A lost and overlooked treasure of the past!

Overall I do like this one better than their previous one ("Sunrise") but both are just short of being 4 star records in my opinion. As others have mentioned "Sunrise" has those highs and lows while this one is more consistant and a little better.

"Flying Dancer" has this catchy guitar intro as vocals and drums join in quickly. Synths come and go. A fuller sound after 2 minutes. "The Source Part I & Part II" has this quiet intro, vocals a minute in with light drums. Organ joins in as well. The guitar aftyer 2 1/ 2 minutes is an absolute pleasure to listen to. A change after 4 1/2 minutes then we get a heavier sound after 6 minutes.

"For All The Clowns" is darker to open and the vocals are almost whispered. Mellotron and orchestral sounds follow. A change after 3 minutes as it becomes fuller sounding with the guitar and vocals standing out. Love the way the guitar goes on and on after 8 minutes. Great section ! "Prelude" is a short piano piece. "The Mountain King Part I & II" is uptempo with vocals a minute in. Spoken female words 3 minutes in.The guitar before 5 minutes starts to light it up. Piano follows as it settles. A lighter mood after 8 minutes. "Dream Queen" is fairly mellow with prominant flute. Vocals after a minute. "Fool The Fortune" is the pastoral short closing track with the birds singing along with flute and vocals.

Humerous album cover as well. Easy to recommend this one and their "Sunrise" record. 3.5 stars.

This album is very much a mixed bag with lots of highs and lows and plenty of variety.

"Marie Celeste" opens with orchestral music that is promptly blown away by a great guitar led soundscape that stops too soon. Sax a minute in followed by an organ solo. Vocals 1 1/2 minutes in. We get a jazzy section 4 1/2 minutes in with piano, sax and bass. Vocals are back a minute later. Kicks back in at 6 minutes with flute, guitar, organ and drums leading the way. "Circles" has a country flavour to it with some harmonica and harmonies. Actually I was reminded of the ALLMAN BROTHERS.

"Rainbow Rider" opens with piano and as the vocals come in the tempo picks up. Don't like this section at all. A calm 2 1/2 minutes in then it starts to build. Some nice guitar before 4 1/2 minutes. It settles back 6 minutes in with a jazzy flavour before kicking back in. Not a fan of this one. "Sunrise" is the over 27 minute closer. A light pleasant melody takes over a minute in before it turns spacey as the melody stops. I must say the bass in this song is huge and the highlight for me. Thunder comes booming in after 10 minutes. The mood and tempo continues to shift. Check out the mellotron before 18 minutes. This song is clearly the highlight of the album and worth the price of admission.

Overall this is worth 3.5 stars in my opinion.

This is a somewhat complex one to review,as there are several tempo changes in the songs that can take you by surprise. Anyway, here goes...the cd kicks off with "Marie Celeste'' (7:32),which starts out with a classical piece for 20 seconds,then gets rocking! But,just when you think it will be an all out rock song, thing's quiet down at 1 minute and the tempo changes between mellow(mostly mellow) and heavy for the rest of the song. "Circles'',which is just over 4.5 minutes long, is more of a country twinge song."Rainbow Rider''(8:35) seems to flip-flop back and forth between heavy and mellow. Of course, the real highlight is the "Sunrise'' song, which clocks in at almost 27.5 minutes. I will give a rundown of the ''Sunrise'' song..In the first 38 seconds, you can hear water sounds. Then,the music kicks in,with some flute work(it sort of reminds me of the Jethro Tull song "Living In The Past'').Between 2:16 and 5:20, there is a keyboard solo,then the music comes back into play,with several tempo changes throughout the rest of the song and musical influences,including rock,classical,and thunder sound effects between 10 and 11 minutes into the song. There is also some flute work at times.You have to hear this to believe it,though it may take a few listens. If I had to compare Sahara to anyone, it would have to be NEKTAR or ELOY , with a bit of JETHRO TULL thrown in for the flute parts.In my opinion,this should have gotten more recognition. I recommend getting this.

Their third album, second one and unfortunately last one under the name Sahara did not feature an ambitious and experimental side-long track as did "Sunrise" but should nevertheless be considered inferior to that one because on the other hand it didn't have a rather mediocre first side as did that one and instead here they delivered a more coherent and very fine album in the best tradition of symphonic Prog from that era. The courageous but slightly half-baked mix of styles like jazz fusion, experimental Krautrock and west-coast vocal harmonies from their previous outputs made place for a mature and more polished progressive rock much in the spirit of bands like Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant and Jethro Tull. Nonetheless Sahara doesn't sound here like a rip-off of any of these bands at all but rather delivered one of the best symphonic rock albums ever done by a German band.

Opening with the appealing but quite straight forward "Flying Dancer" featuring catchy vocal lines this album offers with "The Source", the title song and "The Mountain King" three brilliant Prog pieces almost in a row with running times between 7 and 13 minutes. The music presented is dominated by gorgeous keyboard sound, excellent guitar play (at times by three guitarists) and great vocals by several band members. Especially the title song and "The Mountain King" exemplify very well the change and development of this band. Although I'm usually not a huge fan of twanging moog sounds I find it much appealing how they're combined here with lively flute play, great guitars and nice vocals. The mentioned three tracks are certainly the highlights of this disk but the remaining ones are far from being just filling material. This album should most probably appeal to any fan of symphonic Prog right from the beginning but due to its versatility it's as well an interesting listen for many repeated spins. I'd highly recommend this one as a starting place for this band and I think it's for sure worth 4 stars!

I've got to say that this one isn't my favourite Sahara album and honestly I don't think it should be considered as good as its follow-up though many progsters loving long experimental tracks might find this one more interesting. But especially this side-long track makes it quite difficult for me to fully enjoy this record. Though it certainly has its great moments (more in its second part) and into parts it reminds of Yes-Relayer-period I find it just much too long and especially in its first half there's little happening and the music sounds too pointless and incoherent. But this might have to do with the fact that I'm usually not fascinated by synthesizer tunes which are dominating here. So what about the three tracks on side one? Of those ones actually only the opener "Marie Celeste" which alternates between a more symphonic sound and jazz rock appears convincing to my ears in terms of Prog. "Circles" though being a pleasant song reminds too much of west-coast or even country rock style and "Rainbow Rider" starts like a straight forward rock'n'roll song becoming more interesting just in its second half. Thus overall I couldn't say at all that Sunrise is throughout an excellent album although it's really not a bad one either. Fans of experimental long-tracks and progressive electronic might find side two interesting but in general I'd rather recommend their third and last album as a starting point. But I'd add an extra half star if possible!

The origins of this band hailing from Munich reach back to the year of 1965 when four school friends joined together and named their quartet after an English lesson "The King and the Subject" playing some cover versions of beat staple hits. During the following years they've shown as well ambitions to compose own material and opened for blues legend John Mayall in 1969. It took a couple of years more until 1972 that they released their debut under the name Subject Esq. here in review containing six tracks which are stylistically still rooted much in the late 60's blending psychedelic pop with influences of jazz rock. For their 40th stage anniversary they had a reunion concert of their Sahara 1975-line-up in 2006 here in their home town which I missed unfortunately. But I've got the chance for watching them live again just yesterday and I've got to say their performance presenting a great compilation of the best from all their three albums was absolutely impressing.

The album starts off very lively with "Alone" in a progressive jazz rock vein with excellent sax and Hammond play and continues in a quite up-beat pace with catchy vocal lines in the psychedelic sounding "Giantania" having a nice section with soaring flute in between. "What is Love" then is initially a more pop-ish sounding song in late sixties' style but has great sax and later on a nice percussive section. The all-instrumental "5:13" presents brilliantly played jazz rock on Hammond, guitar, bass, drums and sax alternating with flute. The long-track "Mammon" is certainly the highlight of this disk and offers a very versatile mix of jazz rock and psychedelic with vocal lines reminiscent of US west-coast bands and brass rock bring Blood, Sweat & Tears into one's mind. Sections with mouth organ are alternating with others dominated by sax or flute here, this track was especially on stage a big fun to listen to. Last song "Durance Is Waiting" starts quite different in a Byrds-like manner but soon shifts more into Prog territory with excellent organ/guitar interplay. The two live tracks added on the CD re-issue as bonus had been recorded in 1971 under quite semi-professional conditions and should be considered more a historical document since the sound quality is really low. The version of "Giantania" they played there sounds much different from the final one.

As a summary I can say that this one had been a quite solid and remarkable debut of this band that would present even things on the two following albums released in a slightly changed line-up and under the name Sahara. Though probably not to be considered an essential one it might still be an interesting additional purchase for anyone who owns already their others or for fans of early 70's progressive.

Before they were Sahara, this band were known as Subject Esq. Sahara's second album "Sunrise" is a stunning album mixing pop, folk and fusion elements. Hard to exactly peg this album into one category but imagine a heavy mix of Jethro Tull, with early Yes and snippets of Nektar and you might have an idea of their sound. Musically these guys blend mellotron/organ/piano symphonia with flutes, guitars and accentuated bass in a well crafted format not unlike Yes did. The band lineup was Hennes Hering (Keyboards), Michael Hofmann (Wind, Moog, Mellotron, Vocals), Alex Pittwohn (Harmonica, Saxophone, Vocals), Harry Rosenkind (Drums, Percussion), Stefan Wissnet (Bass, Vocals), Nicholas Woodland (Guitar). Vocals are sung in English and are very well done making this album a real little gem of the progressive era. Although both sides are amazing, it is side 2 that really got my interest with a 27 min long 2 suite epic track (no matter how old I get I still love the epic numbers!!!) . I have the newly re-mastered version and the sound from all accounts is far superior to the previous versions. A great album

Sahara's first album is a good adittion to the German prog scene of the time.It reminds of Eloy and Nektar BUT THIS ALBUM CAME OUT BEFORE THOSE ALBULMS, so that is interesting...Although if that is truth i prefer the Nektar/Eloy(first) albums, but that's just me...Cheers!!

This is a great jazz-rock album from Germany! I haven't heard Sahara yet, but Subject Esq's sound has a notable equilibrium, even if isn't much original but songs (expecially Giantana and the longest Mammon) are very good! The sound quality of live songs leaves more than a doubt.