FOR ALL THE CLOWNS

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!