Visitors

For legal reasons Visitors used the alternate name Force 5 in the USA. Prog-rock with extra-terrestrial thematic, one of the main JPM’s acts…

ABBA - The Visitors (1981) {2012 Remastered, CD+DVD, Deluxe Edition, Polar, 3706261}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (image)+CUE+LOG -> 447 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 172 Mb
DVD5 -> 3.82 Gb | All Regions | NTSC 4:3 | English (Dolby AC3, 2 ch) | ~ 50 m | ISO Image
Subs: Svenska, English, Francais, Deutsch, Espanol, Portugues
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 105 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1981, 2012 Polar Music / Universal | 3706261
Pop / Euro-Pop

Any newcomer to ABBA’s final studio album – which is released this week as a deluxe CD+DVD edition – might be forgiven for thinking that they are listening to some kind of Kraftwerk/Vangelis hybrid as the title track starts, with its pulsing, ominous synths, Bladerunner twinkles, and processed vocals. But no, this is the same band that delivered Waterloo, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do and Fernando only a few years earlier.

With its second and final album, Visitors, Automatic Man unveiled a new lineup. Lead singer/keyboardist Bayeté (real name: Todd Cochrane) and guitarist Pat Thrall were still on board, but bassist Doni Harvey and former Santana drummer Michael Shrieve were gone-and their replacements were bassist Jerome Rimson and drummer Glenn Symmonds. The Bay Area quartet was still interracial (half white, half black), but with the personnel changes came a more commercial approach. While Automatic Man's self-titled debut album of 1976 was an uncompromising, fairly abstract effort that had to be accepted on its own terms, Visitors finds the band making its progressive rock/space rock funkier and more accessible. Automatic Man definitely increased the funk/soul factor on this LP, and tunes like "Daughter of Neptune" and "Give It to Me" have an immediacy and a directness that the first album lacked…

Here is one of the most underrated French albums, but also one of the most sought after, finally reissued by Musea. Visitors was actually a one-shot band gathered around producer Jean-Pierre Massiera, and including about twenty musicians. Besides the rhythm section, the stress was here put on the keyboards (Hammond organ & Mini-Moog) and on choirs that remind of Vanilla Fudge. The band performs a sophisticated music based on numerous breaks and refined developments. Let's also mention beautiful parts by Didier Lockwood's violin, who was here playing for the first time on an album. The music goes from a Yes kind of Progressive rock to elaborated Seventies British bands (Cressida, Gracious!) and to the beginnings of jazz-rock.

LA Psych rockers Triptides just made their finest album yet! After the acclaimed Azur (2015) and Afterglow (2017), Triptides are back with their sixth album! With Visitors, the LA based band are probably delivering their most accomplished album yet. Visitors deepens the exploration started with Azur, digging more profoundly into fifty years of psychedelic pop music with the band's trademarked pristine elegance of melody.