FOCUS II [AKA: MOVING WAVES]

FOCUS and this album is sadly mostly known for the opening track of this album. Yes, this is the album where they launched the Hocus Pocus track and legend. Yodeling is not an everyday occurence in the music business, although the scene was pretty big in Germany in the 1960s. FOCUS did not invent the wheel with that song.

Hocus Pocus is both a blessing and a curse for FOCUS. Because when the last tones of this brash track, the opening track fades out, what is left of this album is a superb progressive album. I am not convinced that Hocus Pocus is a blessing for this album. It may have been a better album without it. The rather short following two tracks Le clochard and Janis is superb understated symphonic progressive rock with a lot of folkish and JETHRO TULL feelings. They are also a huge contrast to the opening track. The title track Moving waves is also a folkish track with one leg in classical music. The same also goes for one of FOCUS best songs; Focus II. Both of these two themes was to be explored more on The Hamburger Concertos some years later. The twenty-three minutes long Eruption completes this excellent album. This track has taken a lot of influences from jazz, classical music (in particular; baroque music) and prog. It is a blend of everything great. Again; this track points towards what were to come on The Hamburger Concertos. It is a monumental track and symphonic prog at it's most fluent.

This is one of the best FOCUS albums out there. It is also one of the better symphonic prog albums out there. It combines baroque music with folk prog (JETHRO TULL) and jazz. It takes symphonic prog to another level. But it is being overshadowed by this Hocus Pocus track and the cult that later grew out of it. If that track is removed, the end result is a mellow, monumental symphonic prog album. Prog rock does not get much better than this.

4.5 stars

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