COLOURS

One of the quintessential albums of the (latter) Eloy. As a five piece (Frank Bornemann sacked drummer Jurgen Rosenthal and keyboardist Detlev Schmidtchen, in favour of drummer Jim McGillivray, keyboardist Hannes Folberth and adding extra guitarist Hannes Arkona), the band rocks harder and soun tighter than before.

The songs are relatively short put to the point, and that's what counts. There's no dull moment on the album.

The album kicks of with a spacerock intro-song, called Horizons, dominated by keyboards and female choir vocals, to set the mood (rather funky aswell, if you ask me).

The next song, Illuminations, starts with a wonderful synth-intro and then kicks into full gear with a wonderful guitarriff, showing that Eloy rocks much harder than Pink Floyd. The middle section is simply awesome.

The third song Giant, is a straight forward rocksong, with a sublime guitarsolo in the middlepart.

Side one closes with a short melodic, moody but beautiful peace called Impressions. Flute, acoustic guitar and a palette of synths make sure you dream away. Even Frank's voice is great.

Side two starts with the longest track of the album, Child Migration, with piano-intro, great riffing and a upbeat middlesection featuring an acoustic guitarsolo on a funky beat.

Gallery is the hardest rocking track of the album, reminds the listener of the old days.

Silhouette has a wonderful build-up, culminating in some aggresive guitarriffing and wonderful solos.

The album closes with a Hawkwind/Tangerine Dream kind of song, only acoustic guitar and a synth- lead, making sure that you can relax after 40 minutes of hard-rocking prog.

Some will find this album sounding dated, but it's the end of the seventies. Most of the progband didn't even produce a good album these days.

And for all the people who dismiss Eloy as a second-hand German Pink Floyd clone, should really give this album a thorough listen. It's Prog/space rock at it's best.

Note: The remasterd cd version comes with 2 bonustracks, Wings of Vison and an edit of Silhouette.