AUGENBLICKE

Novalis' seventh record "Augenblicke" from 1980 gives the listener some nice tunes and musical landscapes but it marks an obvious decline in the group's music that was still extravagant and symphonic on the record before. The musicians are the same as before: Hartwig Biereichel on drums, Detlef Job on guitars and vocals, Fred Mühlböck on vocals, guitars, flute and variophon, Lutz Rahn on keyboards and Heino Schünzel on bass.

What can be recognized as typical Novalis is the poetical sound that is even present here in the less interesting 80s. Four tracks are instrumental and the band does no intentions to be a pop band. But it's not progressive either so it's hard to classify. The record maintains nine songs and we know the vocalist's strong power from before. But no composition is bombastic here. I must say I listened with very bad sound quality so perhaps I didn't get it right. The glorious sound seems to be hard to reach with a short song format. It ends when it has just started in the songs. All songs have good things and my favourite tracks are "Herbstwind" with beautiful vocals in a poetic way and the album's longest track "Als kleine junge" which also contains great vocals. But it's clear that Novalis has become inferior. Five year's earlier they stood on the top so I recommend those records.

It was interesting to hear this record. It's allways funny to se how a great prog band manages to do music in the 80s and Novalis does that quite well when they yet doesn't intent to do hits. But song format has been changed and the bombastic glory unfortunately has faded. Three week stars!