OCEAN

I won't forget the day I bought this album. I was already familiar with "Floating", but little did I know what I'll have in store when I bought "Ocean". I was stunned! Progressive space rock taken to the extremes. This was their second album with the new lineup. To me I felt "Dawn" sounded like the band was messing about maybe a little too much, but it's still full of good material. With "Ocean" they really got their stuff together and created one of the most "out there" space rock albums ever! They created a concept album about the rise and destruction of Atlantis, from creation, the rise of civilization, civilization becoming corrupt, and the destruction by the Gods who had enough. At least that's how I interprited the lyrics on the album.

The album starts off with "Poseidon's Creation". The album starts of with some guitar and string synths, eventually the drums and bass kick in. There's a lead guitar solo from Frank Bornemann that sounded like it came of "Meddle", and it's only the late '70s string synths that let you know this is not "Meddle". Eventually the vocals kick in, singing about "Poseidon". The string synths keep staying. Eventually, once the singing is over, is some great Moog and guitar solos. You get to hear the talents of bassist Klaus-Peter Matziol as well, where he gives us a little slap bass. Eventually the song ends with a rather impressive sounding choir (might not be a choir, but the band members themselves). I was completely blown away by "Incarnation of Logos". Mainly it starts off with just Frank Bornemann singing (about the formation of the planets and of Atlantis) and Detlev Schmidtchen giving us some over-the-top string synths. You'll also hear some spoken dialog. Then the music picks up speed with the whole band participating, with some killer synth solos. "Decay of Logos" seems to be about the corruption of Atlantis, greed, lust for power, wars, etc. It starts of with more spacy synths, but eventually it become the more aggressive number on the album, almost verging on hard rock. The last cut, "Atlantis' Agony at June 5 - 8498, 13 PM Gregorian Earthtime" (about the final destruction of Atlantis by the Gods) is most problematic of the album, at least by many. I don't have such a problem myself, but some think the first half is tedious. Here, the song starts off with some narration. The string synths kick in, and keep droning for the next 8 minutes or so. Narrations keep popping up from time to time. But there's more than just synth dronings here. There are bizarre wailing sounds played on an ARP 2600 synthesizer, an out-of-this-world pipe organ (at least, an electronic keyboard that sounds like one), and various other subtleties that often gets overlooked, and maybe that's why I was never bored with it. After that big "pipe organ" at the end, and the final narration, the band finally gets to business. That means, real singing, band participation, the usual great Moog solos, and that overall great spacy feel.

This is totally unreal. There must have been something in the air in Germany in '77 (in the cocaine-dominated world of '77, it seems to me that pot and LSD were still dominant in Germany in '77) to have a record-buying public to make "Ocean" outsell such better known acts as GENESIS and QUEEN in ELOY's home country.

Yes, ELOY has often gotten a bad rap. The singing, the songwriting, etc. Yes, this album is totally '70s, you can't get around that fact. Yes, Frank Bornemann needs some brushing on the English language. But I think this is a way cool album. For those who want off-the-wall spacy prog rock, you can't go wrong here.