EARTH AND FIRE

In 1967 the twins Chris (guitar) and Gerard (keyboards) and bass player Hans Ziech founded the formation Opus Gainfull, one year drummer Cees Kalis joined the band. The name was changed into Earth & Fire, because astrologically Chris and Gerard are 'Earth', and Hans and Cees 'Fire'. The female singer Manuela "Lisette" Berloth completed Earth & Fire, but due to a severe eye disease she had to leave. "Lisette" was replaced by Jerney Kaagman, a discovery from Golden Earring singer Barry Hay. In 1969 and 1970 Earth & Fire had huge success with the singles Seasons, Ruby Is The One and Wild And Exciting, a blend of rock, pop and psychedelica, all reached the Dutch Single Top 5. In 1970 Ton van der Kleij replaced drummer Cees Kalis, and in 1971 Earth & Fire decided to turn into professionals, and keyboard player Gerard bought a Mellotron. This unsurpassed 'prehistoric sampler' became a pivotal part of the legendary early Seventies Earth & Fire sound, inspired by the fact that the band attended gigs from The Moody Blues and King Crimson in London.

Shortly after Gerard purchased the Mellotron M400 Earth & Fire released the album Song Of The Marching Children (1971), nowadays considered as one of the highlights in Dutch symphonic rock, but also highly praised worldwide, from Germany and the UK to the USA and Japan. The combination of Jerney her angel-like voice and the majestic sound of the Mellotron are an important part of the appreciation. I only know a few bands that also blend a female voice and the Mellotron, these are Julian's Treatment (a project by SF writer Julian Jay Savarin) from the UK, the Norwegian White Willow and the French Sandrose.

Side 1 opens with the track Carnival Of The Animals, it contains a captivating contrast between the sumptuous Hammond organ and the wonderful, at some moments high pitched voice of Jerney. Then the dreamy song Ebbtide, tastefully coloured with sparkling flute and delicate guitar work. And now my favourite Earth & Fire composition, Storm And Thunder. The intro features awesome vintage keyboards, soaring Mellotron violins and Hammond organ arpeggios, then Jerney joins with a dreamy voice, slightly melancholical. The band had done a great job to translate the ominous storm and thunder atmosphere into music, what a tension! Halfway a bombastic eruption, Jerney and the Mellotron carry the music, topped with howling guitar runs and propulsive drum beats. Finally the storm and thunder disappear, musically translated with soaring Hammond and Mellotron that slowly fade away, wow, what a song! Side 1 ends with the instrumental track In The Mountains: Chris shines with a varied guitar sound, using several effect pedals, and Gerard is Hammond adds a warm flavour.

Side 2 is filled with the epic titletrack, my highlight in Dutch symphonic rock history, how beautiful and compelling. Around 18 minutes we can enjoy those distinctive 24-carat symphonic rock shifting moods, accelarations, slowdowns, eruptions, and lush instrumentation: from dreamy to mid-tempo and bombastic, and from mellow Hammond and intense classical guitar to an interlude with Mellotron violins and in the end militairy drums, blended with ?. Mellotron violins. You almost see the marching children, impressive! Jerney succeeds to meander wonderfully between all those changing atmospheres, it was a splendid idea to replace "Lisette' by another female singer. That decision is an important part of the worldwide appreciation for Song Of The Marching Children, still a Dutch masterpiece after 50 years.

After this album Earth & Fire released a few other fine albums, but not at the level of this one. In 1979 the band even topped the charts with the poppy hit single Weekend, far away from the wonderful symphonic rock sound on Song Of The Marching Children.

By the way, for the vinyl freaks: the Dutch label Bennies Fifties has released a 12-inch limited edition golden vinyl version of Song Of The Marching Children.

In 1974 Dutch prog pride Earth & Fire was thinking about its musical direction: to continue with the Song Of The Marching Children formula, or to broaden the musical horizon with new progressive ideas? Because some members got in touch with the swinging jazz and jazzrock from Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and especially the awesome Mahavishnu Orchestra. One year later the band released their new studio-album To The World Of The Future, how about the musical direction, and the progressive ideas?

1. To The World Of The Future (10:47) : The new album starts with a catchy beat and cheerful ARP synthesizer flights, is the new musical direction disco prog? No, because this composition also contains 24-carat symphonic rock, embellished with majestic Mellotron drops and sensitive guitar leads, along classical orchestrations. Also a wonderful part with a strongly build- up, very moving guitar solo, topped with lush Hammond. And we can enjoy famous Dutch conga player Neppie (or Nippy) Noya, known from his work with Jan Akkerman, Billy Cobham, Chaka Khan and Eric Burdon, a pleasant exotic flavour.

2. How Time Flies (3:10) : A wonderful ballad with warm vocals, soaring harp play and intense Mellotron violins.

3. The Last Seagull (6:55) : This an instrumental track that begins with a swinging rhythm and sparkling electric piano, then trademark Earth & Fire symphonic rock, and finally the propulsive conga beat from Neppie Noya.

4. Only Time Will Tell (3:46) : A captivating blend of jazzrock and symphonic rock, Jerney Kaagman shines with a very strong vocal contribution, topped with Mellotron violins from the late Gerard Koerts, this was an Earth & Fire trademark keyboard sound.

5. Voice From Yonder (7:00) : First an intro featuring the distinctive Fender Rhodes electric piano, followed by a swinging rhythm with nice vocal ideas. Then the trademark Earth & Fire, a surprising conga and Mellotron choir duet, and finally that swinging Fender piano, a strong and varied mid-long composition.

6. Love Of Life (3:21) : This Earth & Fire disco prog formula turned into a huge commercial success: swinging, vintage keyboards (Mellotron) and Jerney her bit sultry voice, the sexy appearance in legendary Dutch Toppop contributed to that succes.

7. Circus (6:12) : The final composition sounds wonderful with its dreamy atmosphere, Jerney shines again with high pitched and emotional vocals. This is topped by a long and swirling solo on the Hammond organ.

The bonustracks are several A and B sides from hit singles, like Thanks For The Love and the awfully commercial What Difference Does It Make.

Apart from the irritating disco prog factor on this album, Earth & Fire delivers a lot of interesting prog moments, obviously inspired by the legendary jazz and jazzrock, as mentioned in the intro of this review.

My rating: 3,5 star.

"Mechanical Lover" is even less progressive. It doesn't sound like The Association, The Doors, or Jefferson Airplane, but if you were to amalgamate those bands, maybe this is what you'd get. Nice vocal harmonies, but otherwise a pedestrian song, well suited to a b-side.

So, a nice hard-rock single from 1970, but hardly progressive.

Journey to Atlantis, a great journey for me. It's very surprising the evaluation for the album "Atlantis" would not be so high and decent as I've expected, even though it was released just after Earth And Fire's masterpiece "Song Of The Marching Children". Surely the longest titled track (upon the entire A Side) plays the role of the signboard of this creation with colourful passions and appearances (hard rock, folk, symphonic, psychedelic, and so on). The first melodic attack along with Chris' crying guitar plays would absorb the audience conspicuously. Sounds like Japanese Enka flooded with emotional, tragic texture ... it might be a tad rare a suite gets started with such a strict sadness of melody lines. As the suite goes ahead, the guitar essays will explode more and more emotionally. Jerney's voices are not so perfect but our heart would get attracted deeply, especially in the part "Destruction" drenched in fruitful soundscape. Who cannot appreciate this suite eh?

On the other side ... a couple of melodic gems are upon the B Side really, let's listen. "Maybe Tomorrow, Maybe Tonight" is one of the most popular, most acceptable songs of all upon their career. Gerard's keyboard / mellotron play is crazy delightful and drives other instruments / voices more and more of uptempo. In the last phase of "Fanfare" following a psychic sound drama "Interlude", some mysterious, sorrowful phrases drag the audience into the Earth like Classical polyphony or canon (obviously the Baroque scene had exerted much influence upon their creativity). Jerney's fragile but enthusiastic voices give definite power to us in solitude. "Theme From Atlantis" sounds like another excerpt of the magnificent A-Side suite but mystic rites not heard before should be there definitely. The epilogue of this album "Love, Please Close The Door" quite suitable for the suite finale might feature solemn "down-to-the earth" I suppose.

For me this Symphonic Progressive Crystal can be called as one of cornerstones, like the previous masterpiece of Earth And Fire.

Anyways, this is basically where progheads jump off the boat as far as Earth & Fire is concerned. They're now a pop/disco act, and I can't deny the disco influence, but in all fairness, side one isn't all that bad. There's that disco element that's sure to scare off progheads, but I'm actually surprise of the proggy approach of much of this side. As a matter of fact, I don't find it any worse than the title track of To the World of the Future, which itself is an odd disco/prog hybrid. Right in between "Recognition?" and "A Princess in Egypt" is a bit of a shot experimental bit. There is also some small amount of Mellotron, but since real strings are used on the album, it's little surprise tron is used so little on this album (but surprisingly, their next three albums, Reality Fills Fantasy, Andromeda Girl and In State of Flux still uses the Mellotron, albums you'd think they'd completely abandoned that keyboard). I actually love side one, might not be quite on the level of Song of the Marching Children or Atlantis, but what is? Side two justifies the reason so many people dislike this album. "78th Avenue" (did Jerney Kaagman have trouble saying "seventy eighth", so she ended up saying "seven eighth"?) is a disco-funk type of song that was released as a single. Not too bad, but I doubt progheads will have much patience for it. "Smile" and "Green Park Station" are just plain awful, the former a cheesy ballad, the latter a lame disco number about a station in the London Underground. "Dizzy Raptures" isn't too bad (which isn't instrumental despite the album credits saying it is), and I thought the closing song, "Driftin'" was rather good, in that similar spirit to "The Last Seagull", but with vocals. I swear I hear Mellotron on this one, but given the album is full of real strings, it's hard telling (most of the rest of the album at least they don't hide it's real strings). One of those albums to get on the cheap. I should know, I got mine for cheap. Following albums, of course are worse. Three stars because side one is actually pretty good, as well as "Driftin'".

Not only did they kept their excellent symphonic style of their sophomore effort, but Earth & Fire decided also to exhibit the same structure considering the pieces on the album, so ''Atlantis'' opens with the eponymous sidelong track, which sounds a tad less dramatic than ''Song for the marching children'', but its equally good in terms of musicianship.First and foremost Gerard Koerts' powerful KING CRIMSON-ian Mellotron strings are on full display and Chris Koerts's slightly raw yet melodic guitar solos carry the symphonic vibe all the way in a track, that also contains lots of light organ themes, certain Classical influences and Jerney Kaagman's unique vocals.16 minutes of intense Progressive Rock, great composition in the tradition of Classical Music, featuring thematic changes and variations and a nice atmospheric depth.The rest of the way is a bit more conventional with slight Psych-Pop elements sneaking in between the orchestral moments.The keyboard work now sounds somewhere along the lines of THE MOODY BLUES and EKSEPTION, featuring plenty of Classical-spiced organs and more dramatic Mellotron parts, like on the great ''Fanfare'', the element that was rather discreet in the sidelong piece.At this point they also remind me of FOCUS, the two bands shared the same taste for ethereal Symphonic Rock and grandiose keyboard orchestrations with electroacoustic changes and instrumental pomposity.

Beautiful work.I can't really say its on par with the previous album, ''Song of the marching children'' sounds more of a complete work, but ''Atlantis'' is also a strong and melodramatic Progressive Rock effort.Especially if this one pops out as your first experience of Earth & Fire's music, you'll love it.Strongly recommended...3.5 stars.

Song Of The Marching Children is their number one masterpiece, which is filled with a brooding gothic atmosphere. Apart from the first two songs and the instrumental "In The Mountains"(can't have been in Holland), all songs carry the same dark atmosphere. "Storm & Thunder" (a true symphonic rock single, that topped the charts!!) is one of the many highlights. I have the Esoteric Record version and that has the original single version as one of the bonus tracks. This edition also provides the best mastering.

Title suite "Song Of The Marching Children" is an oasis of mellotron sounds, that will also appeal to those who loved "In The Court Of The Crimson King". A sombre and depressing march ends this true symphonic epic.

A must in the collection for all those into early mellotron dominated symphonic rock ! As you will see at the end of the rating line, this album was (again) not appreciated by the proggophobic clan of daemacho, waeguk, purplefloydfish, marfish and other sad persons, who all at the same time decided to reward this album with their two star ratings. Again, we wonder: why?????

progpig66.

Despite the years I've been listening Symphonic Prog, never played special attention to EARTH & FIRE, mainly because the reviews I read spoke about a strong KING CRIMSON influence, and to be honest that's not my cup of tea. But about a year bought several old albums for a very good price, among which I found Song of the Marching Children, which I recorded in my cellular and didn't listened.

Last month I was in a plane and while playing with the phone, found this album and played it...What a great surprise, the sound was simply delightful from start to end, the delicate fusion between Psychedelia and Classic Symphonic caught me from the start. Of course the organ sections by Gerard Koerts impressed me, but the highlight of the album lies in the composition and the delicate voice of Jerney Kaagman.

To be honest I couldn't find any KING CRIMSON reference (thanks God for that), but a slightly JEFFERSON AIRPLANE with Baroque fugues and that acid Hammond so reminiscent of the mid 60's, just a perfect combination of the best of two decades.

The whole album is impressive, but if I have to select my favorites, will start with the magnificent Carnival of the Animals, a song that represents perfectly the essence of the band, being that the music is oriented towards Symphonic while Gerard Koerts with his Hammond and Kaagman take us back to 1965 with such delicacy that I couldn't find any collision of genres.

Also have to mention Ebbtide and that haunting Hammond intro that reminds the listener of Bach. But about the mark of 2:29, Kaagman takes the lead and transports us again to the 60's in Carnaby Street? Baroque and Psyche perfectly blended.

Of course, no review of this album would be complete without mentioning the 18:20 minutes Song for the Marching Children, a brilliant suite that has everything a Prog listener wants to listen, but also the moment in which Jerney Kaagman discovers she's not only a Psych singer with hints of Grace Slick and Mama Cass, but also a fantastic Symphonic vocalist with one of the most solid voices I ever heard.

The rating is easy, 5 solid stars for an almost perfect album.