review by thomas

For a debut album this is a very good album, in my opinion highly underrated since among reviewers the general opinion seems to be something like this: a decent album but inferior to things to come, things that are the real Camel. In fact this album is so much more than merely a decent album. Herein are a couple of well-known songs such as the concert classics “Mystic Queen” and “Arubaluba”, and the ultimate fan classic “Never Let Go”. The latter was tried out as an edited single which was a really disappointing attempt, the things that make the song so good were all gone in the edited form – not uncommon in the record companies search for hits, even amongst the groups that were in nature anti-single minded. “Slow Yourself Down”, “Separation” and “Six Ate” are lesser-known songs but just as good as the more well known ones. One thing that captures your attention is the lack of Andy Latimer’s flute playing, it shows up first on “Mirage”, the follow-up album to this one.

Camel played the kind of progressive rock that later on became the measurement to which others in the same league were measured by. The basic Camel was drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals (mostly done by Andy). Add to this the beautiful flute playing from Andy and you get the picture. If you haven’t yet investigated Camel you should do it now! This is one of the major important groups in progressive rock and not easy to describe if you haven’t heard them. Sometimes very dreamy and spacey, sometimes melodic and mellow, other times rocky and wild. Camel’s instrumental formation and their musical foundation were not very original in itself, but what came out in the end certainly was. They relied heavily on the instrumental side of things, the vocals used sparsely but anyway not only occasionally, the Camel formula was simplified fifty-fifty.

This is the starting album of a new dawn; the Camel sound gave way to much speculation, but in the end it was a new sound, perfected by the group itself.