Focus - Moving Waves

Released - October 1971

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Mike Vernon

Selected Personnel - Thijs Van Leer (Organ/Flute/Vocals/Mellotron/Piano); Jan Akkerman (Guitar/Bass); Cyril Havermans (Bass); Pierre Van Der Linden (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Hocus Pocus

In discussing Focus's debut album In And Out Of Focus, I mentioned how strange it is that a band that had very little lasting impact on the world's musical consciousness as a whole should have been such a crucial figure in my discovery of prog music, an discovery that went on to fuel my obsession for music as a whole. In general, Focus were a bunch of strange guys from the Netherlands messing about with jazz fusion and the like that the world largely ignored. Briefly, from 1971 to 1972, people actually paid a small amount of attention to them, and it was pretty much entirely down to the hit single from their second album, Moving Waves. It's quite simply one of the most recognisable instant classics in the history of prog, and will always be the band's crowning achievement. The album it belongs to is also a masterpiece and, in the wake of my previous review for Tarkus, it really demonstrates that it's possible to make overblown, pseudo-classical instrumental prog music that's really incendiary and exciting and compelling without ever resorting to the tedium that Emerson, Lake & Palmer would often find themselves indulging in.

After the oddball weirdness of their debut, Focus splintered for a while - guitarist Jan Akkerman, perhaps the key figure behind the sound of that first album, departed to form a new band with bassist Cyril Havermans and drummer Pierre Van Der Linden. When the remaining members of Focus went their separate ways, founding member Thijs Van Leer joined Akkerman on organ and flute to create a new Focus (drummer Van Der Linden would come to be a crucial member of the band and still plays with them today). One of the big lessons learned on In And Out Of Focus had been that the band really came alive when jamming through fusion-inspired instrumentals as opposed to awkwardly crooning through more traditional songs, so Moving Waves became a masterful template of the style Focus would come to be masters of over subsequent years. There is only one song with lyrics here, and it's the album's low point - the title track features Van Leer crooning some lyrics by Sufi poet Inayat Khan over his own unaccompanied piano, and it's a fairly tedious affair. Other than that, the band devote themselves to their instrumental work and it's never short of exhilarating.

Up first is that song, the huge hit "Hocus Pocus." Built around Akkerman's frenetic heavy guitar riff, which anticipated a lot of heavy metal in the 80s, the song veers from thrashing hard rock to typically Focus-esque nonsense interludes, involving Van Leer's absurd and iconic yodelling as well as his breathless flute solos and cartoonish accordion. It's one of few songs that manages to be absolutely clownish and ridiculous at exactly the same time as being undeniably, epically cool and effortlessly cements Focus's place in the annals of history. It's followed by a couple of songs that demonstrate the band's stylistic range, with the classical guitar of "Le Clochard" and the Medieval-styled flute of "Janis." "Moving Waves" sits in the middle, the album's only dud, before segueing into "Focus II," the second of a series of self-titled instrumentals that the band continue putting out to this day (I think they're up to ten of them now). It's the most overtly jazz fusion-influenced song on offer, shifting from Akkerman's stately lead guitar line to a more energetic full-band workout. The second half is taken up with a lengthy suite that more than gives "Tarkus" a run for its money. Ostensibly an adaptation of an opera about Orpheus and Euridice by Jacopo Peri. However, whereas Emerson, Lake & Palmer would tend to be slavishly faithful to their classical influences in a way that robbed the original work of its grandeur but also robbed their actual music of much heart or authenticity, Focus totally reinvents that little-known opera into a fusion epic that's stately and unusual and interesting but still has the beating heart of a great rock song. From the slow-moving grandeur of its opening movements, "Eruption" really hits its stride when it reaches the incendiary guitar of a section named "Tommy" after its composer, Tom Barlage of the Dutch band Solution. "Tommy" shifts seamlessly into a frenzied jam session that then leads us back into the classical beauty of the opera, with Van Leer's flute to the fore. The piece as a whole is a masterclass in how to do prog right - for a piece almost twenty-five minutes long, it almost never dips into indulgent meandering (Van Der Linden's lengthy drum solo is the only section that outstays its welcome), and manages to achieve greatness both as incendiary rock and grandiose classical music, without cheapening either influence. It's one of the truly great instrumental prog epics.

This is an album that's been close to my heart since I was very young, and that came to take on an even greater significance at uni when I began to understand its place in the context of prog as a whole. For a band that, besides "Hocus Pocus" and the later "Sylvia," virtually never had any impact on the music world, Focus are a precociously talented bunch, and genuinely give some of the biggest prog bands of the era cause to be embarrassed and to up their game. For me, the later Focus 3 is perhaps their best work - Moving Waves dips a little in the middle as it struggles to match the greatness of the two great pieces that bookend it - but their second album is a true masterwork, and, after the intermittently great oddness of their debut, is one of the greatest examples of a band really honing their sound for their second album. One of the great prog classics doomed to rarely be heard by anyone but a die-hard prog fan.

Track Listing:

1. Hocus Pocus (Thijs Van Leer & Jan Akkerman)

2. Le Clochard (Jan Akkerman)

3. Janis (Jan Akkerman)

4. Moving Waves (Thijs Van Leer & Inayat Khan)

5. Focus II (Thijs Van Leer)

6. Eruption (Thijs Van Leer; Jan Akkerman; Tom Barlage; Eelko Nobel & Pierre Van Der Linden)