Seventh Sojourn [SACD] [Digipak] [Remastered] - Moody Blues (The)

Advantages: Excellent all-round Moody's album
Disadvantages: Short by modern standards but recompensed by additional material

...conclusion. 10. The Balance **** This is Graeme Edge's once customary monologue. He is accompanied by muted guitars and vocal harmonies. There is a mystical, possibly religious, slant to the words of the verses and a hint of hope for the future "Just open your eyes and realise the way it's always been … Just open your heart and that's a start". THE EXTRAS There are six previously unreleased tracks appended to the album. The play order is as follows: 11. Mike's Number One 12. Question 13. Minstrel's Song 14. It's Up To You 15. Don't You Feel Small 16. Dawning Is The Day 11 is a curiosity in that it is a Mike Pinder composition and is performed live but incomplete during one of the recording sessions for the album. Mike ceased performing with the Moody Blues in the years between their seventh "Seventh Sojourn" and eighth "Octave" albums... Read review

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Advantages: Brilliant, typically Moody's sounds
Disadvantages: A bit short by current standards

...This was the last studio album produced by the Moody Blues before they went into their six year exile of the mid 1970s. It is a surprisingly well rounded disc that has almost none of the psychedelic influences of previous offerings. It is a collection of individual songs (albeit written singly and in collaboration by all members of the group) rather than a themed album. It also contained two of the most distinctive of the Moody’s tracks. The content reflects the mature Moody Blues sound: gentle ballads alternating with driving ballads; rock guitars and synthesisers alternating with quasi-classical strings; lyrics that conjure up every human emotion. Given this, ‘Seventh Sojourn’ as an whole looks forward to the future albums of the 80s and 90s (despite the exile period and the changes in line up) rather than backwards to group’s origins... Read review

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Advantages: Foretold their development and their record label
Disadvantages: Perhaps not of immediate appeal but it will draw you in

...been remixed onto a single disc. Probably because of this, the accolade "DeLuxe Edition" has been dropped and there is no slip case to protect the digipak. Even so they have crammed another nine tracks on to the CD. The 24 page booklet reproduces the original album cover right down to the purple ink, the songbook, photographs and the (now) rather trite eulogy from Lionel Bart (musical luminary of the time). The rather surreal cover illustration, spreading front and back, is again by Phil Travers and components within suggest elements of the songs. The booklet also delivers another chapter in the story of the Moody Blues and how this album came about and recaps events from the previous two albums. AVAILABILITY ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM - Moody Blues (1969) Hybrid SACD (2006) DERAM 983 215-3 Amazon.co.uk £10.99 Sourced from Amazon... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful