This is a great album and it was the last album by the original lineup of Camel. Mike Akerfeldt of Opeth chose it as the album that changed his life in Guitar World Magazine, so, being an Opeth fan, I decided to check it out...
1) Arsitillus (5/5)
Short bouncy, atmospheric intro to the album. Has lots of synthesizers. On first listen you think "what the....? what the hell is THIS doing here?" but eventually it settles in. Its got a neat soaring bouncy thing going on and is a good hook to lead in to the rest of the album.
2) Song Within A Song (5/5)
This song has a lot of mood changes. First it starts out rather slow and serious, kind of relaxing. A flute part comes in, then leading into...droning, almost hypnotized sounding lyrics that make you "leave all the world behind until tomorrow". Then another nice flute solo and more singing. The song is very sad and moody-sounding at this point. Then it switches into a sort of uplifting, soaring part that makes you smile :). Then it gets even faster, but a bit more serious this time. There is a keyboard playing over a sort of jazzy sounding accompaniement. It builds and builds up to the ending. Overall it's a very relaxing and suspenseful song.
3) Chord Change (4/5)
This song has no lyrics. It meanders a lot like my album reviews. It starts out upbeat. It has lots of interesting rhytms and chromatic rhythms. It even has a cool part which sounds almost jamacian....then it goes into a cool part where there is singing along with the main melody of the guitar. Then it slows down into a sort of sorrowful sounding part with a guitar playing a relaxing and slow, meandering solo. Then it changes tempo to another sorrowful sounding part, now with the keyboard playing. Then evventually it builds up and up and up until it ends with a more uplifting part. Almost like what happened in song within a song. However it sometimes seems to drag on a bit which is why i gave it a 4.
4) Spirit of the Water (5/5)
A short, lonely-ish atmospheric ballad. It begins with the "theme" melody played by flutes and piano palying in the background. Then the wonderful singing comes in, with deep lyrics. It makes me imagine about a lonely person coming and sitting at the edge of a silent lake in the middle of the night, thinking about life. It's one of those songs that repeats in your head a lot and makes you want to sing. Very pretty song.
5) Another Night (5/5)
Begins with sort of an arepggiating jazzy chord. Which then morphs into a bluesy thign and leads into the main riff....sounds like a hard rock song. Very catchy! The singing fits in very well. Then it gets slow for a bit and back to the main riff, another repeat of the verse. Then it goes into a funky thing with an interesting rhythmic thing going on (possibly an odd time signature) and the bass line plays something almost eastern-sounding with soaring keyboard notes. Then it leads into....possibly one of my favorite repeating guitar parts at 3:25....it sounds serious and wonderful. Then it goes into another eastern sounding part. And then back to taht awesome guitar part and into....a dissonant chord! Oh the tension...i love the way Camel used this chord so effectively. And back into the hard-rock sounding riff and the verse. And it then goes into a neat keyboard solo over the riff, then a blues-ish guitar solo. And then finally it repeats with the guitar part that i said i really liked and fades out. This song is my favorite off this album. Great riffs and melodies and weird sounding stuff blends into it very well!
6) Air Born (4.5/5)
Begins with a melancholy flute part over a piano part. Then it shifts to a soaring, sad but kind of uplifting part. And then slows down into very slow sad sounding vocals, very reminiscent of "song within a song". This part sounds kind of a mix between the doors and pink floyd. Then into a harpsichord? part with more flue. The flute makes you think of a little bird soaring high in the sky on a calm, gray-skied day. Then it gets slower but sounds a bit more happier. Lots of nice keyboard work. Very atmospheric. Then it gets sadder again. And back into the sort of sorrowful/yearning/uplifting/whatchamacallit verse and finally ends! It might drag on a bit, hence the 4.5, but not much; overall a wonderful song.
7) Lunar Sea (4.5/5)
Alas, the last song of the album. It's almost hard to belive time flew by so fast with the rest of the album. But i'll stop rambling. It starts out with soaring string-things and bubble-effects then morphs into an upbeat flying thing with an awesome gutiar part.....you gotta love the tone. Then a desceding thing....and and back to flying. This sounds like the musical equivalent of walking on the moon with low gravity. Then it moves into another, even happier part that feels like all is at peace and harmoney. There is an interesting bassline going on with a cool keyboard synth thingy over it and upbeat drumming. This goes on meandering with lots of nice melodies and sound effects. Then it gets fast and serious with a guitar solo now. It builds up and up and up...finally it gets fast (not very common with songs of this album) and then sort of "disintgrates" into a very spacey part which finally fades out. A splendid ending to this album.
This was the very first Camel album i had heard. It sounded cool on first listen, but grew more and more specialwith each time. It is one of those albums you cant get enough of. Its not that hard to get into eitehr. So i recommmend it to everyone especialy if you are a fan of Opeth, pink floyd, spacey stuff. If you have never heard this type of music before....open your mind and chieck it out! Sorry if this review sounded very fangirlish but i really loved this album...definitely a classic.
