Thursday 4 April 2019

Horizons - THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH***

Sunflower Morning/Angelina/Skylight Man/Day Of The Lady/Real Cool World/I Fought For Love/Horizons/Again & Again

The Greatest Show On Earth were a band created by the Harvest label intended as Britain’s answer to Blood Sweat & Tears. Their horn based debut album Horizons failed to live up to the commercial promise of the US counterpart.

“Brass-heavy, keyboard-driven British progressive rock in the grand old style. The first of two very strong albums that this band released, it's something of a shame that they didn't get a much longer run.”

“Crossover between the proggish Doors music/Arthur Brown and actual progressive. Pretty cool, if just a bit too much jamming.”

“What a wonderful progressive rock record by this British group. Even if they're pretty much forgotten in these days they still managed to get a No.1 hit in Switzerland with the song Real Cool World. However they're still a pretty unknown band and probably only progressive rock fans know about them. There's a clear psych influence to their sound as well.”

“The Greatest Show On Earth managed to combine progressive rock with rich psychedelia, and spiced this dish with a generous share of jazz riffs. The result is the magnificent and very colourful Horizons.”

“This is the first album by the obscure British prog/jazz-rock outfit The Greatest Show On Earth, an octet with a three-piece horn section formed and led by brothers Garth Watt-Roy (guitars) and Norman Watt-Roy (bass), who also wrote most of the alloriginal material, which is surprisingly excellent. This album enables us to discover a hidden gem of early jazz-rock fusion, which was swept away by the tides of time.”

“Fairly hard prog rock, that losses a few points due to it's inclusion of brass. But this doesn't overwhelm their sound, and it's still very good nonetheless. It features some diverse and quite trippy material with mild psych influences.”

Sunflower Morning, Angelina and the wonderful Horizons will drive you breathless. For those who like progressive rock to a high level, I recommend.”

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