POWER AND THE PASSION

This album marks an era in the band's career where they decided to record a more sophisticated brand of spacy prog, knowing the early '70s guitar/Hammond-organ style explored on "Inside" and "Floating" were reaching a dead-end (and as much as I like those albums, "Floating" does sound a bit behind the times for 1974, but if they recorded that album in 1972, they'd get away with it).

"Power and the Passion" was their first exploration in to the concept album, in this case regarding time travel. They wanted this album to be a double album but their manager Jay Partridge declined, so it was a single album. I doubt there would have been enough good material to make it a double album, but then the production of this album wasn't that great.

Often maligned, it's not really that bad of an album. You get to see the style they'll perfect on following albums like "Ocean", but this was obviously done by the old lineup. Manfred Wieczorke added on some Moog, string synths, and even a little clavinet, although I can't understand why they say he had a Mellotron where I don't notice any. The only new member added this time was additional guitarist Detlef Schwaar.

The album starts off with "Introduction", which that's what it is, an introduction, not much to it, just a prelude played on organ. "Journey into 1358" is a nice spacy piece dominated by string synth, you already get to hear the new direction the band is headed, but when the Hammond organ kicks in, you can tell some of the elements of "Inside" and "Floating" hadn't been totally left behind, as you'll notice on some of the other pieces. "Love Over Six Centuries" involves Jamie's travel back to the year 1358, where he turns on a local medieval girl on to marijuana. Here you get lots of spoken dialog between Frank Bornemann (portraying Jamie) and non-member Mary Davis-Smith (portraying Jeanne, Jamie's would-to-be girlfriend, who loves the experience of smoking weed) against a drone of spacy string synths. "Mutiny" continues in this new spacy direction, consisting of lengthy spacy synth solos, with a bit of a classical influence, before the band gets a bit more heavy with the vocal section. "Mutiny" is mainly a spacy and meloncholic ballad that actually reminds me of PULSAR's "Halloween", even though that would wouldn't be released for another two years (and the only album PULSAR had released at the time - 1975 - was POLLEN). "Daylight" had a bit of a JETHRO TULL-feel, the last piece where Frank Borenemann was trying to sound like Ian ANDERSON. This is another demonstration of the band not entirely leaving their old sound behind. "Thoughts of Home" is a short, clavinet-dominated piece, an instrument, for some strange reason, wouldn't be used on an ELOY album until Hannes Folbert joined the band sometime in 1979 (and used it quite a lot on albums like "Colours" in 1980, "Planets" in 1981, and "Time to Turn" in 1982). "The Zany Magician" seems to have a more heavy metal feel to it, with demented vocals, portraying a zany magician who can help Jamie return home to the present. "Back into the Present" oddly reminds me of KANSAS circa "Song For America" without the violin. A nice, upbeat song demonstrating that with all the technological progress between the years 1358 and 1975, very little social progress has been made (I can relate to that). The song segues in to the spacy ballad, "The Bells of Notre Dame", which is basically a reflective piece where Jamie thinks of Jeanne, even though of course, Jeanne wouldn't be able to live in the present day.

This is truly a nice album to own, not as bad as many of the naysayers say, it might not be as good as "Ocean", of course, but still worth owning.