Eloy: Ocean (1977)
Eloy was a prog rock band that was actually fairly popular in their native Germany. In America, they’re almost completely unknown, with only two of their albums, Inside (1973) and Floating (1974) having American releases. 1977’s Ocean was their sixth album and is my favorite from these guys. By this time, the band had a complete change in their lineup, except, of course, for guitarist and vocalist Frank Bornemann. At this time, the band consisted of Bornemann, keyboardist Detlev Schmidtchen, bassist Klaus-Peter Matziol, and drummer Jürgen Rosenthal.
This is perhaps the most ridiculous prog rock album you’ll ever hear! Synthesizers that are absurdly spacy (lots of strings synths are used throughout), spoken dialog from time to time, and lyrics that deal with the rise and destruction of Atlantis. And since Frank Bornemann was a German who insisted on singing in English (unlike Novalis, where they sung in German on all their albums, except their 1973 debut Banished Bridge), his singing tends to be heavily accented, but I’m used to that given I’m used to listening to plenty of foreign prog bands from non-English speaking countries singing in English. In fact Eloy gets the most frequent criticisms from the songwriting and in the vocal department. But because I’m a big prog rock fan, I really dig this stuff big time, that stuff doesn’t bother me as long as the music is good.
The album opens with “Poseidon’s Creation”, regarded by many as the album’s high point. The cut has a lot of lengthy instrumental passages, plus there’s a part of the album that sounds like it came off Pink Floyd’s Meddle (particularly the lead guitar). The end part features some excellent use of bass guitar and synthesizers. The next cut, “Incarnation of Logos” which basically consists of lyrics talking about the creating of the universe and the planets against a ridiculously spacy backdrop of string synths. A little spoken dialog creeps up, then a killer synth solo. This song is ’70s all the way!
The next cut, “Decay of Logos” is one of the more heavy numbers here. Lyrics dealing with greed and religion being abused and distorted. The final cut, “Atlantis’ Agony at June 5th – 8498, 13 PM Gregorian Earthtime” is by far the longest cut, at over 15 minutes. The first half of this cut consists of spoken dialog and some ridiculously spacy synth drones. There’s a rather sinister tone to this, as the lyrics dealt with Atlantis’ destruction by the Gods. The dramatic pipe-organ like sound and wailing sounds from an ARP 2600 synthesizer adds to the atmosphere of the piece. After all the droning synths are over, the music starts to kick in, and it’s very music similar to the first cut, “Poseidon’s Creation”, with more synthesizer solos, before the album ends with the drums and bass, then this odd echo effect from Frank Bornemann’s guitar.
Ocean might not be to everyone’s taste (particularly the vocals), but I think this is a truly killer prog rock album. In 1998, Eloy (whose lineup by then consisted of Bornemann, Matziol, keyboardist Michael Gerlach, and drummer Bodo Schopf) recorded a sequel to Ocean called Ocean 2 – The Answer, which doesn’t sound much like the original, the production and sound on that sequel is much more modern (although surprisingly the band used plenty of analog synths on that one, as well as the usual digital synths you expect in a 1998 recording).
If you like avoiding anything released after 1978 or thereabout, stick with the original Ocean. The original Ocean actually sold 200,000 copies in Germany (it outsold bands like Genesis and Queen there), which is quite an accomplishment, as this is full of everything I like about prog rock. So if you like some off-the-wall spacy prog rock, give this album a try.