OCEAN

In a scenario in which the enormous upheavals of the punk explosion, with its raw chords and thematic contestation, challenged rock and its more elaborate variants, Eloy, after the conceptual "Dawn" and far from being swept away by the new trends, returned to release an even more ambitious conceptual work, "Ocean" (1977), the sixth album in their discography. Based on an adaptation of the mythological story of Atlantis, the lost and submerged continent somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, "Ocean" builds its musical proposal on the basis of spatial atmospheres of enormous amplitude combined with recognisable progressive sonorities.

Frank Bornemann's guitar arpeggios and the forceful rhythmic base built by Klaus-Peter Matziol's bass, Jurgen Rosenthal's relentless hi-hat and Detlev Schmidtchen's hammond and hazy synthesizers intertwine with the tales of the mystical rise of the enigmatic continent created by Poseidon and inspired by his beloved muse Kleito, give shape to the very progressive 'Poseidon's Creation', the opening track of the four that make up "Ocean", and one of the band's most identifiable.

And both the haunting and volatile "Incarnation of the Logos" with Bornemann's reverberated singing and the energetic "Decay of the Logos" with Matziol's rough and murky bass and Rosenthal's obstinate hi-hat, describe the rise and fall of Atlantis, always with Schmidtchen's synthesizers as a permanent common thread, just as relevant in the extensive astral introduction of the concluding "Atlantis' Agony at June 5th - 8498, 13 P.M. Gregorian Earthtime", a gloomy half-time with clear Floydian reminiscences that portrays the sinking of the island punished by the gods with a devastating earthquake in "a terrible day and night", and marks the end of the album.

"Ocean" is one of Eloy's best works, if not the best, and one of the furthest in the quest to expand the cosmic reaches of progressive frontiers. A space rock jewel that would have deserved a greater transcendence and more recognition in the general consideration than it got.

4/4.5 stars