Galleons of Passion Import by Finch

Galleons of Passion Import

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Galleons of Passion Import

Reader Reviews
Finch, like Earth & Fire, Supersister, Focus, Alquin, Supersister, Ekseption, Trace, and Kayak was one of many prog bands to come out of the Netherlands in the 1970s. Finch managed to release three albums in the mid to late 1970s: Glory of the Inner Force (1975), Beyond Expression (1976), and this one, Galleons of Passion, from 1977. Finch was basically lead by guitarist Joop van Nimwegen who I feel is one of the finest guitarist the prog scene had to offer, his guitar playing is very much in the style of Jan Akkerman, he even goes as far as playing a Gibson "Les Paul", just like Akkerman, but he's even a better player than Akkerman, in my opinion. The band also featured Peter Vink on bass, as well as a keyboardist and drummer. With Galleons of Passion, keyboardist Cleem Determeijer and drummer Beer Klaasse had left the band replaced keyboardist Ad Wammes and drummer Hans Bosboom. They also switched labels too, from Negram, to Bubble, a division of Ariola. The music on this album seems to have less creativity from their previous two albums and yet they still managed a fine album and really didn't affect their sound too much, aside from the creativity. Here they pretty much stick to a Pink Floyd, Moonmadness-era Camel and Focus 3 (the song off the Focus album by the same name, that is) kind of pace and tends to more conventional symphonic prog and less of the fusion. Certainly, as in their previous two albums, Joop van Nimwegen is often a show-off and his guitar playing often overpowers the rest of the band. The new keyboardist tended to use more string synths than Cleem Determeijer before him, making this by far their spaciest album. The songs tends to be shorter here, no side length epics like "A Passion Condensed" from Beyond Expression, for example, in fact the album has five songs altogether. There's a couple of cuts in the 4-5 minute range, while the longest are just under 10 minutes. But, like their previous albums, the production here is incredible, definately more polished and sophisticated than Glory of the Inner Force. The cuts on this album are "Unspoken is the Word", "Remembering the Future", "As One", the three part suite "With Love as the Motive" and "Reconciling". Of all the songs on this album, my favorite by far is "Reconciling", a totally killer way to close the album because it features some totally mindblowingly intense passages that harkens back to the finer moments of Glory of the Inner Force. It's something like Focus meets Moonmadness-era Camel with Glory's intensity. "With Love As the Motive" starts off spacy, then there's cool guitar riffs and spacy string synths, before the rather mellow finale, which seems a little out of place because the mood seems to conflict with which otherwise I felt was my second favorite cut. "As One" has been described as Focus playing "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", and from hearing it, I supposed that's true. "Remembering the Future" starts off with the typical Finch sound of this album before it ends with Peter Vink's unique sounding bass and a bunch of percussion. All three of Finch's albums sound rather dated, but I don't mean that in a negative sense, it's that it sounds very obvious when the band recorded these albums: the 1970s, since these albums sound very '70s. Unfortunately Galleons of Passion was Finch's last album, after all, I'm pretty sure the band saw it coming (the decline of progressive rock, that is) and bailed out before they, themselves might release some embarassing albums, like Yes giving us Tormato, it's American counterpart Starcastle giving us Real to Reel, Gentle Giant giving us Giant for a Day, and ELP giving us Love Beach (these were all albums released in 1978, a year after Galleons of Passion was released). Unfortunately there's no plans for a Finch reunion. Joop van Nimwegen had since became embarrassed of his stay in the band, calling it a "sin from his youth" (although the rest of the band had much fonder membories). The great thing of Finch was they were one of the few prog bands that released only good albums (not counting the countless one- and two-shot prog bands, of course), you can't say that to certain much better known prog bands like Yes, ELP, Genesis, or even Focus, for that matter. Personally I feel Glory of the Inner Force as by far their best album, so start there, then come to Beyond Expression, and this one, Galleons of Passion.

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