HERE IT IS

I was really taken by surprise by this album. The reason of course, is the late year of release: 1980. The album was actually recorded at the beginning of 1979, but the band had no luck in getting the album released for the stretch of a year (they even tried to get it released through Klaus SCHULZE, presumably through his then-newly established Innovative Communicaitons label, but to no avail). They then got it released on a small label called Cain in 1980, and as you might expect, fell through the cracks, since no one was interested in prog anymore (this was an era where punk and disco was on the decline and new wave was coming in).

The band consisted of two keyboardists (Guido Harding, Jochen Kirsten), bassist Ludgor Samson, guitarist Detlef Deeken, and drummer Martin Bruer. The two keyboardists played Mini Moog, Hammond organ, clavinet, Farfisa electric piano, and string synths, and for such a late era, created some excellent keyboard sounds (no one will complain that it's too "plastic sounding"). Originality wasn't on the band's side, the rather obvious ELP and GENESIS influences are plain for everyone to see. But despite that, the music is top quality. It also sounds very '70s, so '70s prog fans won't have anything to complain about (despite the 1980 release).

The opening cut, "Venice" proves that. The next two cut, "Breakthrough" and "Changing Scene" are two more mid-tempo pieces. "Andy" and "Crowded" are my two favorites here, the latter being the longest piece (at over 12 minutes), I especially like the intense middle passage, and the great themes found throughout. "Encore" is pretty useless, as it was one of the themes from "Breakthrough", and it's only 33 seconds long. And while the old LP is apparently next to impossible to get a hold of (I never seen it offered anywhere), Musea Records in France reissued this gem on CD (but with new artwork, because the band apparently wasn't present to oversee the artwork when Here It Is came out, since they were pretty certain it would never be released). The reissue comes with a bonus cut, "Treibsand". This piece originally came from a 1981 compilation album of various bands from Dorsten, Germany (where the band is from), and is a 1981 version of a song that never made it on to "Here It Is" (due to the usual time constaints of the LP). This version totally smells of 1981, because of those ugly, early '80s polyphonic synths that are popping up here (luckily the Mini Moog and clavinet are still here, they should've stuck with their Roland string synth instead of that Oberheim OBX, Prophet 5, or whatever that was). I can hardly be more pleasantly surprised, this is truly one of the best prog rock albums released during the prog dry spell of 1979-92.