For the last year or so I've been cataloguing my vinyl records with a collectors app, Discogs. This is a collage of the 2061 albums that I've already uploaded to my collection. Still have about 600 more to go.
Album Review #81: Focus // Ship of Memories // 1976
What's there to say about Focus? A Dutch prog rock band with so much talent it's kind of mind-boggling. This is an unusual album, from what I can tell it's a bunch of cut demos and content that didn't make their main albums. Let's dive in!
You may have heard this band before. Their most famous song, "Hocus Pocus", makes the rounds on the internet every so often, and it was featured in the soundtrack of the 2017 movie Baby Driver. Take a listen here:
Frontman Thijs van Leer is an absolute maniac! He is joined by guitarist Jan Akkerman, bassist Bert Ruiter, and drummer Pierre van der Linden.
It's really a shame this group isn't more well known, they are all insanely gifted musicians. I think the weirdness didn't help with the popular charts. Rock yodeling is a fairly unexplored avenue. But once you get past the weirdness, these guys have some serious chops. I would put Jan Akkerman right up there with the great guitarists like Clapton and Beck. And van Leer is a true renaissance man, exceptionally talented on keys, as well as flute, voice, and songwriting. His vocal range is absurd: easily over four octaves and he sounds great at every register.
The back of the jacket has producer Mike Vernon's tale of his exploits with Focus, talking about how each track on the album came along. It an eclectic mix for sure. All instrumentals, but the vibe of each song is very different. It makes sense, as these were all basically demo tracks taken from across the band's entire career (up to that point).
I have to say my favorite is "Red Sky at Night". It's a slower ballad, a little less upbeat than the rest of the tunes. Something about that main melody in the guitar is just so emotional, though... There's a melancholy there, something difficult to put into words. As I said before, Akkerman is a beast. You also get to hear Thijs van Leer's flute playing in this, which is always a treat. I actually have his solo flute album too, he's like a professional level orchestral flute player!
It feels wrong to just pick this one song though. The entire album is great. Other favorites include "Can't Believe My Eyes", "Glider", and "Crackers". I would listen to the whole album if I were you. If you like instrumental jazzy, funky, rocky stuff put the whole thing on!
An excellent selection tonight! It's hard to believe this is only Santana's second album, they really hit the ground running. Usually with bands it takes some time to find their characteristic sound, but some of the band's biggest hits are from this album. More after the break!
Carlos Santana and his band released this album in September of 1970, and it immediately was a hit among critics and the public. Well, mostly. One contemporary critic gave it a C+, calling it "a not disreputable performance, most likely a failed experiment or a pleasant piece of hackwork".
I'm happy to report that he has been proven wrong. This album has some of the most staying power of any album released in the last 60 years.
The name "Abraxas" has a mysterious origin. Santana got the name from the book Demian by Herman Hesse, which is quoted on the back cover:
"We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it; We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas..."
The name itself has mystical connotations in Gnostic Christianity, referring to the name of the Great Archon, a creator spirit. Skimming the Wikipedia page was getting me scratching my head, that's a rabbit hole I don't have the mental bandwidth for tonight.
Now, that quote from the book isn't related to the painting used in the album art, but I feel like it could be. There's just so much going on with the art. So many little details, so intimate, so mystical, so overwhelming. That's something I enjoy about having the physical album right in front of me, I get a nice big 12"x12" piece of art. Even in the picture I took for this review, you barely get any of the details.
It was painted by Mati Klarwein, who went on to paint album covers for many big musicians, like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Earth, Wind & Fire.
On to the music. Santana's specific blend of Latin rhythms and blues is truly timeless. And that man knows his way around a guitar! I really do hope that songs like "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va" are beloved favorites of yours, and if not, go listen to them right now!! Don't keep reading until you're done listening!
So, now that you've got that sound fresh in your mind, I've got good news for you: the whole rest of the album sounds just like that. And a lot of these I had never heard before! They just hadn't gotten quite the exposure of the big singles, but they're by no means bad songs. I'd say there's not a bad one in the bunch.
One I want to highlight is "Samba Pa Ti".
One of the more laid-back, instrumental tracks on the album. But that guitar! That guitar!! So soulful! And that nice, beefy Hammond organ sound! Excellent! I could listen to this all day. I also really liked "Incident at Neshabur" from side A. Really nice jazzy chord changes, seamlessly flowing into romping blues accentuated by a zesty conga rhythm.
All in all, just a phenomenal album. 10/10, no complaints. A real winner!
