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Camel - Dust And Dreams CD (album) cover

DUST AND DREAMS

Camel

 

Symphonic Prog

3.64 | 605 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Seyo
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
2 stars On the surface, "Dust And Dreams" looks like the best and the most developed conceptual album CAMEL did ever since "Snowgoose" in 1975. Surely it blows away a handful of awful mediocre soft techno pop albums recorded from 1978-1984. Production and musicianship is almost perfect. Musical style can be described as "symphonic", not in the rock sense but rather in a moody, atmospheric meaning. The tones prevailing are sad, sorrowful and sometimes gloomy, which in a way try to depict the theme of Steinbeck's novels. The album is coherent as a whole and the listening process flows uniterrupted by sudden changes of tempo or volume. Lovers of New Age will probably love this album too.

However, a main ingredient of prog rock is missing: dynamics! "Dust and Dreams", depending on your expectations, can also sound too flat, boring, bedtime invoking muzak, that often touches the AOR-ish extravaganza and bombast, while lacking a strong artistic energy and statement. CAMEL (or Andy Latimer alone?) too often sounds like second-rate Alan Parsons Project or Sting in his most commercial, post-"Nothing Like the Sun" phase. Nothing terribly wrong with that, but in order to deserve better rating on this site, I expect much much more from a band...

And finally, I am sort of fed up with the British artists exploiting the American "go west" myths in order to sell well. The best artistic statements on the theme of particular historical, societal, cultural or even political events or myths have been usually created by the strong local personalities. So, in the case of American topical South-West I will always prefer Gram Parsons or GREEN ON RED. Uppps, sorry, they are not prog rock...

PERSONAL RATING: 3/5

P.A. RATING: 2/5

Seyo | 2/5 |

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