CAMEL

When I was 14-15 years old (I was born in 1959) I was a huge fan of Yes, Genesis, Floyd, ELO, ELP, Van Der Graaf Generator, Barclay James Harvest and later on of more obscure bands like Ramses and Fireballet at least in the prog genre (often referred to Eurock in Belgium at the time - Merci, Piero). I have no clue how nor why I could have missed a band like Camel. This will only change in 2004 after having read so many good reviews of their work. I decided to give it a try and purchased about half of their catalogue in a very brief period of time (most of their earlier work sells really cheap).

This is probably not Camel at his best but it is still a good album. A bit too jazzy oriented to my taste like "Slow Yourself Down" (almost sounds at times like a Santana track), "Six Ate" or "Curiosity".

Latimer has not yet reached his emotional peak (guitar wise) and the music produced here is somewhat different from their later work. Maybe "Never let Go" is the exception.

I like "Mystic Queen" very much. It is a highlight. Although the general mood is quite tranquil, it rocks at times as well. Latimer performs here a very subtle guitar break. Very good piece of music (like "Separation" and "Arubaluba").

Since I was quite late in discovering Camel, I purchased the remastered edition with two bonus tracks; one of which is an instrumental live track recorded at the mythical Marquee Club : "Homage To The God Of Light" recorded on October 30, 1974 (19 minutes number !). This is a long jam number : jazzy and hard at times, prog at (too few) others. It will be a song from the early stages of Camel. They performed it already before the release of this album during live gigs (it sits on "Camel On The Road - 1972). The second one is the single version of "Never Let Go" which is still at present a live favorite.

This album was sold just over 5,000 copies during its first year of release which led MCA (the record company) to decline the release of further Camel work; I guess they must have regretted this decision. Two stars.