DAWN

Well, with all the potential "Power and the Passion" demonstrated, the band disintegrated because they found their manager Jay Partridge quite unbearable (to the point where I don't seem to find any info that he dealt with any future band after ELOY fired him), not to mention some of the band members didn't quite go for the concept album. But since EMI noticed that the album was selling well enough (30,000 copies sold in Germany), they gave Frank Bornemann a second chance and allowed him to reassemble a new ELOY. New members included Detlev Schmidtchen on keyboards and additional guitar, Klaus-Peter Matziol on bass, and ex-SCORPIONS drummer Jürgen Rosenthal (who appeared on "Fly to the Rainbow", which was produced by Frank Bornemann, although uncredited).

The production on "Dawn" is such a vast improvement, it's hard to believe how bad the production of their previous album was and it was just released the year before. ELOY was going off the deep-end here by adding on strings to many of the cuts as well. The opening cut, "Awakening" starts off with the sound of thunder, an orchestra, before the guitar and vocals come in. "Between the Times" is a heavier piece, showing that Detlev Schmidtchen was probably playing guitar here, rather than keyboards. There is a lot of spoken dialog on this piece as well. "The Sun Song" is a spacy ballad, with the synthesizers finally kicking in. "The Dance in Doubt and Fear" is another great spacy piece with lot of male and female spoken dialog. "Lost!?? (Introduction)" consists of a bunch of Moog solos, while "Lost!?? (The Decision)" more consists of actual music here. The next couple of pieces, "The Midnight-Fight" and "The Victory of Mental Force" has some good ideas, but a few parts seem to fall flat, in my book. "Gliding in to Light and Knowledge" is a stunning spacy ballad that ends with "Le Reveil du Soleil/The Dawn", which consists of the most impressive Moog soloing the band gave on this album.

The band is certainly headed for more great things, as their next album, "Ocean" clearly demonstrates. Personally I find "Ocean" the better album so go for that album first.