Eloy - 1978 - Live

Eloy

1978

Live

01. Poseidon's Creation (11:37)
02. Incarnation Of Logos (8:46)
03. The Sun-song (8:30)
04. The Dance In Doubt And Fear (7:36)
05. Mutiny (9:56)
06a. Gliding Into Light And Knowledge (4:24)
06b. Inside (6:34)
07. Atlantis' Agony At June 5th - 8498, 13 p.m. Gregorian Earthtime (20:54)

Frank Bornemann / vocals, guitars
Klaus-Peter Matziol / bass, vocals
Jürgen Rosenthal / drums, percussion, voice
Detlev Schmidtchen / keyboards

Eloy was one of the few space rock bands from the original progressive rock wave that released a live album. If you count the space rock bands that released amazing albums such as this one back then, their numbers are even smaller. Indeed, this album is a gem among space rock for being one of the few very good space rock live albums from the 70's, together with Hawkwind's Space Ritual.

Probably this album is so great for 2 reasons: 1) it was recorded during the best part of the band's best period ever, which was between 76 and 79, when Eloy recorded their best and most famous albums, so both the musicians and the set-list were top-notch; 2) the band managed to gather the best songs from (almost) each album they did so far and play a better version of them live, what makes the album even more interesting, because the songs are not simply played as in the albums: the songs here are unique versions of the of the already great studio version (The Sun Song and The Dance of Doubt and Fear had their running time almost doubled and Atlantis' Agony At June 5th - 8498, 13 p.m. Gregorian Earthtime had its running tim e increased by 5 minutes).

There is, however, one problem in this album. The song Incarnation of Logos has some cracks about halfway through the song and some considerable background hiss near the end. Though those problems are probably caused by some problem in the master tapes, they are considerably annoying.

One interesting feature of this live album is that Eloy's album Ocean is almost played in full, being only one song missing, called Decay of the Logos

What an astonishing release by Eloy. They managed to put their best in this release and the result is great. Also, this album is one of the few good live documents of the original big space rock bands that was actually released in the 70's.