Customer Reviews

Martian Chronicles

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have listened to this album in a friend`s house some weeks ago and I decided to order it right away. Why ? Because it`s brilliant ! If you like electronic music or simply the traditional progressive rock, the group fuses both. The musics are also enchained one to the other (although there are non-recorded spaces dividing them)and, there are no lyrics, only sounds that remember them. But even if you belong to that majority (like myself) that doesn`t speak hungarian, you will be able to even understand what the meaning of the album is. But the most important of all is the technical quality of the artists and their instruments. It`s really a very nice surprise from Eastern Europe.

I am a progressive rock fanatic... i consider this album a masterpiece.... Don't think twice, BUY IT!

This album has two things going against it: it's from the 1980s (around 1983 or 1984, sources vary, I have the 1995 Hungarian CD reissue on a label called Gong that has two bonus cuts), and it's from Hungary. At that time, Hungary was still communist, so it's a miracle an album like this was allowed to be released and made available in that country. Basically this album is an all-instrumental symphonic prog album inspired by Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. In my opinion, I find this album a bit overrated, but by Eastern European standards, and the fact it was released in the 1980s, this is way better than many albums that came from that area of the world, and of that decade, and much better than bands like Asia (which was basically some of the biggest prog musicians playing bland, radio friendly pop). Solaris often gets compared to Camel, don't ask me why. Cziglán István's guitar work is much heavier than anything Andy Latimer ever came up with. Erdész Róbert's keyboard work is pretty much his own style (the keyboards are all analog, but be aware: it's in the early '80s style, rather than '70s, so if you're expecting tons of Moog, Hammond, Mellotron, etc., look elsewhere), with the exception of some Tangerine Dream style synths at the beginning of the album. Perhaps it's the flute work of Kollár Attila that brings in the comparison to Camel, but if anything, Solaris actually reminds me of Tako, an excellent prog rock band from (what was then) Yugoslavia who released two albums, Tako (1978) and U Vreci Za Spavanje (1980). Tako often had similar heavy guitar passages (courtesy of Miroslav Dukic) and similar flute work (courtesy of Dorde Ilijan), even one cut from their debut, "Lena" sounded like a blueprint for Marsbéli Krónikák. I have now begun to wonder whether if Solaris listened to any Tako albums? Or was it coincidence? Did albums from Yugoslavia get in to the Hungarian market? Who knows. Now back to Solaris, Marsbéli Krónikák starts off with the side length title track which is divided in to several parts which includes many different themes and great ideas. It even starts with some funny sounding voices which I guess is the sound of martians speaking Hungarian. The second half of the album consists of shorter, often heavier pieces, like "M'Ars Poetica", "Apokalipszis", and "Legyözhetetlen". Plus the CD reissue contains two bonus cuts, "Orchideák Bolygóya" and "A Sárga Kör", the latter an interesting, highly percussive rock with a strong ethnic bent (in Hungarian style) to it. I have no idea where these bonus cuts came from, whether they appeared on a 45, or were they from the Marsbéli Krónikák sessions that never made it to disc, not sure. Whatever the case is, this is truly one of the better albums I've heard from the 1980s, and as everyone know, the 1980s was a very prog unfriendly decade. While I find it a bit overrated, this is still worth getting in your collection.

I've just seen that this item is currently unavailable and I just few days ago I got my CD! so my thought is: did I get the last item? seems as so... Anyhow this album brings all good and power of prog, and opens eyes to the good things tha may be hidden from the 80s period which is not very well known of masterpieces in progressive... I can't express in words what all those beautiful sound create in my mind when listening to them. Now this item has a very priviledged position in my collection and will never go away... Hopefully it will be reissued, it's a must-have treasure

Fans of retro electronica-laced rock, especially with geeky, spacey overtones, will get a kick out of the Hungarian 80's sci-fi excursion thoroughly, the rest of us have to sift through some pretty dated formulations to mine some exciting material- which does in all fairness, reappear quite often and surprisingly amidst soppy transitioning.

If you like this type of music, buy this disk... it's a masterpiece. All instrumental album. Flutes, keyboards, guitars... all there. Great stuff.

This is the best work of this european band, the record is all instrumental, with some martian voices (?). This is not a progressive record of a old school, but don't needed.