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Time (1981) - ELO - Everything about the album ...

One of ELO's most unusual albums is "Time" (1981)

History of the album "Time" (1981): Electric Light Orchestra (ELO)

ELO changed significantly at the start of the 80s, if we compare it with the beginning of the journey. The dissonance is especially strong in comparison with the work of The Move from the end of the 60's, which changed from English mass rock to original power rock with a riff base without solo parts. At the turn of the decades, after the emergence of Jeff Lynne, ELO was seen by The Move's leader Roy Wood as an opportunity to realise a new idea - combining effects from the world of rock with musical classics. There was a time when The Move's profits from studio recordings were spent entirely on recording ELO albums. It was two projects at the same time: the young people were so overwhelmed with emotion and thirst for realisation. The idea was original and continued to be realised even after Roy Wood's departure, although Lynn, who took on the role of leader, gravitated towards rock'n'roll. But violins and cellos still distinguished ELO for a long time: in parallel with guitar fragments, rock arrangements of classics were recorded. All this ensured success with the fans.

Electric Light Orchestra - "Time" (1981)
Electric Light Orchestra - "Time" (1981)

Gradually and unobtrusively the band inclined towards lyricism. By the end of the 70s, it made an attempt to organically produce disco motifs - it was "in trend" at that time. Like many others, the band also experienced the punk craze, but this period of synthesis was over by about 1981. The album "Time" was a powerful breakthrough: it was a special combination of rock and pop music. Synthesizers played an active role, and even the drum machine style drummer did not reduce the density and virtuosity of the sound.

The idea behind the album

The album was conceived as a concept album - quite in the tradition of ELO. Its theme was time travelling. The prologue was the song "Twilight", where a new sound was attempted - synthesizers dominated, the song composition remained classical (in the form of verse-chorus), but the variety of melodies was very wide, with vocal polyphony. The guitars remained somewhere in the background, with no solo parts. It was like a better version of The Move, but with an optimistic charge. Lynne did go back to his roots, but on a new turn, completing the finalisation of Roy Wood and The Move's intentions.

Electric Light Orchestra cover
Electric Light Orchestra cover

After the prologue and the percussion of "Yours Truly 2095", the song "Ticket to the Moon" started, which became a hit. It's like an echo of the past: there are no synthesisers, but the piano part is exciting. There are guitar fragments, Mick Kaminski's violin and tonality is such that it sticks in the memory almost immediately. A small choral synthesiser-polyphonic insertion in the middle of the performance brings us back to the reality of the futuristically oriented album, but the song itself gives energy in this new world full of mystery and uncertainty.

With the end of the lyrical fragment there is no hasty leap into the illusory world of the future, the musicians suddenly dive even deeper into the origins and deliver the song "The Way Life's Meant to Be", sounding in the style of Buddy Holly of the late 50's with acoustic guitar, only with a more modern sound. This is repeated on the other side, in the song "Hold On Tight", as if performed by Roy Orbison in disco rhythms, but in early rock'n'roll style with a powerful guitar part and piano.

ELO - Hold on Tight
ELO - Hold on Tight

Side "A" closes with "Another Heart Breaks", a synthesiser melody in a minor key that reduces the excitement of fantasies about the future. The song gravitates towards advanced rock, and the newly emerged drum machine does not smooth this impression.

The beginning of the second side is the impressive and grandiose slow "Rain is Falling", with a prologue in the form of a piano piece, but creating a sense of otherworldliness through the modulations of the solos. The piano is replaced by synthesisers that literally envelope the vocal part. The composition is saturated with lyricism, while the minor starts to grow and creates a certain tension. The finale is a rather hard to hear disco - a unique fragment of the whole album.

Apocalyptic notes are replaced by a new birth in light reggae - "The Lights Go Down". The whole palette of styles realised by the musicians organically merges into something whole. The band has surpassed itself: it has combined the impossible - a spectrum of stylistics, rhythmic patterns and genre traits, sometimes contradictory. It is truly unique, and certainly represents the centrepiece of the album, the culmination.

In the middle of side two is another mega-popular composition, "Here's the News". Its beginning is the sound of synthesisers, and this basis will remain throughout the whole composition. However, it is art-rock. The rhythm section and percussionists speak of this in moments of high tension. Lynn's voice is tense and exciting, the synthesiser riff is heard at different levels and in different variations, but it duplicates the same musical syntagma over and over again.

This is the song that clearly illustrates: ELO's role in the development of electronic music is really great. They remained original and kept their uniqueness.

In Here's the News the frightening picture of the future is recreated rather repulsively, but the song that follows makes up for this feeling with faith in the representative of the new century. The title of the song is "21st Century Man" and it feels very much like a finale, although a sequel does follow. The song gives the impression of being acoustic, although you can clearly hear the presence of synthesisers there, but the sound turns out to be absolutely clear and strong. How is it possible? The synthesizers are like a violin group, and therefore they sound accordingly.

ELO
ELO

The forecast of a man of the new century is followed by "Hold on Tight", a nostalgic composition for Roy Orbison's irrevocably gone time. In the previous track, the bright sound of melodic fragments, prologue and epilogue, is palpable, and the general mood of this song is upward, it's as if it's a summation. However, the band members decided to create a different composition. According to the conceptual idea of the album, the cycle ends with the epilogue, where the dynamic "Hold on Tight" smoothly transitions to. The epilogue duplicates the sound of the beginning of both "Twilight" and "21st Century Man", but with a voice and guitar solo in the background - this is another vivid reference to progressive rock. It is difficult to refer the band to this direction, but its motifs and tendency in the work of Electric Light Orchestra musicians are very tangible.

ELO
ELO

The secret and success of the album

All this speaks about the phenomenon of ELO in the rather difficult year of 1981 in the history of music. In the 80s, every domestic fan of rock and even heavy metal had absolutely no problem accepting this album and putting it on their personal top list. Many had no idea what kind of music the band played in the early 70s and to which direction they belonged. However, the musicians created something that deserved everyone's attention: not even in the style of rock, but it attracted and for a certain moment reconciled fans of absolutely different directions in music. And that is the greatest merit: in broadening the musical horizons of an entire generation, in embodying a colourful and distinctive eclecticism in one. This album is a truly impressive journey through time, as well as a leap into the coveted future imagined by those distant people of the 80s. The album sounded and still sounds very deep, accurate, sincere and its relevance does not diminish with the passage of time. This is about the fact that it contains important meanings, and not for one, but for many generations.

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