''Colours'' is the eighth studio album by the German

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...

band Eloy, released in 1980. It is the first non-

concept A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, ...

Eloy album since '' Floating'' (1974), and the first to be supported by a single and two

music videos A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to ...

. Since last year's ''

Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes ''Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes'' is the seventh studio album by the German rock band Eloy, released in 1979. It is a concept album written by Jürgen Rosenthal, dealing with the transcendence of human existence through spirituality. It is al ...

'', Eloy added

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

ist Hannes Arkona to their lineup, while also replacing

keyboardist A keyboardist or keyboard player is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instru ...

Detlev Schmidtchen and

drummer A drummer is a percussionist who creates music using drums. Most contemporary western music ensemble, bands that play Rock music, rock, Pop music, pop, jazz, or Contemporary R&B, R&B music include a drummer for purposes including timekeepi ...

Jürgen Rosenthal Jürgen Rosenthal is a German rock drummer. Biography Rosenthal was a member of Uli Jon Roth's band Dawn Road and became a member of the Scorpions along with Roth and Francis Buchholz. He appeared on the album '' Fly to the Rainbow'' be ...

with Hannes Folberth and Jim McGillivray. Songs "Silhouette" and "Horizons" were released as a single, while music videos were made for "Silhouette" and "Illuminations".

Background

During the autumn of 1979, Hannes Arkona joined Eloy as a touring member, a second guitarist along the band's leader Frank Bornemann. As personal tensions led to the departure of Detlev Schmidtchen and Jürgen Rosenthal, Bornemann decided to make Arkona a full-time member, and with the addition of Hannes Folberth and Jim McGillivray, the new Eloy lineup was completed by the spring of 1980. Frank Bornemann also created his own ''Horus Sound Studio'' in

Hannover Hanover ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Lower Saxony. Its population of 535,932 (2021) makes it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-l ...

at the beginning of that year, which served as the band's new "base". Amidst those changes, the release of the next album and the following supporting tour was already scheduled for the autumn of 1980, thus new music had to be written in a very tight schedule. With no time to create yet another concept album, Eloy chose shorter and tighter song forms, toning down the

prog rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog) is a broad genre of rock music that primarily developed in the United Kingdom through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early-to-mid-1970s. Initially termed "progressive pop", the ...

element. They also decided to use "Child Migration", an unreleased single from 1979, which they heavily altered and re-recorded.

Reception

Shortly after its release, ''Colours'' entered the

German charts The GfK Entertainment charts are the official charts for music, home video, and video games in Germany and are gathered and published by GfK Entertainment (formerly Media Control and Media Control GfK International), a subsidiary of GfK, on be ...

. It charted for 17 weeks straight (June–October 1980), peaking at the 28th position. Its charting duration was a new record for Eloy at the time, surpassing last year's ''Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes'', which charted for 14 weeks straight. Music press was positive towards Eloy for the first time, but the album sold fewer copies than the previous three, and the supportive tour that followed was less successful, too. Songs from ''Colours'' were fairly well received by the live crowds, but older songs like " The Apocalypse" or " Poseidon's Creation" certainly made fans more enthusiastic. Convinced to follow the fans' will and not the music press' opinion, Bornemann decided to switch back to the concept album norm that made Eloy successful, this time in a more emphatic and grandiose way than ever before: a double concept album, comprising from ''

Planets A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets by the most restrictive definition of the te ...

'' and ''

Time to Turn ''Time to Turn'' is the tenth studio album by the German rock band Eloy, released in 1982. It is the second part of a double concept album conceived by Frank Bornemann, with the first part being ''Planets''. It tells the sci-fi story of Ion, a ...

''.

Track listing

Music by Eloy and lyrics by Jim McGillivray, except where noted.

Personnel

All information according to the album's liner notes. Eloy * Frank Bornemann:

guitars The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of the ...

on tracks 2–8 * Hannes Arkona:

* Klaus-Peter Matziol:

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

vocals Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define sing ...

* Hannes Folberth: keyboards * Jim McGillivray:

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

Additional musicians * Edna and Sabine Matziol: lead vocals on track 1 Production * Eloy:

arrangement In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orchestr ...

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stat ...

* Jan Nemec:

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, re ...

, mixing Artwork * Winfried Reinbacher:

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

Charts

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1980 albums Eloy (band) albums