IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD

In search of the lost chord is The Moody Blues' third and it's from 1968, thus a very old prog record. As every person reaching this record it's impossible to not be fascinated of the fantastic cover art work. The front page is colourful and mythologic. It contains both the divine and the pagan thoughts. Also the back page and the inner sleeve is interesting and shows a lot to read about.

The Moody Blues plays without symphony orchestra here and they play on many different instruments such as sitar, tablas, mellotron(Justin Hayward), cello, mellotron (Mike Pinder), cello(John Lodge), flutes, saxophone(Ray Thomas) and tablas(Graeme Edge). Beside this they of course play their usual instruments. In 1968 they built further on the ground that was laid by The Beatles, but I would not draw any more similarities than that they both uses very much sitar. I mostly like what The Moody Blues does but I found the music little more stuck in their time than other prog rock. Beside being progressive in many ways, this band also is very conventional, an interesting paradox. My favourite songs are "House of four doors", "Legend of a mind" and "Om" which all have great flute passages and a deep progressive soundscape. Those tracks are lovely and shows what capacities they had to make interesting music. The lyrics are psychedelic and I really love the time spirit that was living then.

But when Moody Blues does its pop song, I feel very much that others do it better. The power of them is to be found in their most experimental songs such as in fantastic "Om" but many tracks are week. They didn't make what Beatles did when they blended the pop songs with experimental stuff. "In search of the lost chord" is an even record, no tracks are bad, but too many is just common good, so four stars isn't possible. This record of The Moody Blues really contains some very good prog songs but its biggest merit is historic. In search of the prog roots and pre-existence, this is an interesting clue. Three strong stars!