Moving Waves

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Hocus Pocus is nothing short of awesome, featuring some wonderfully manic yodelling by Thijs van Leer (you MUST watch the video to get the full effect). No one in English and America, and I’m including Frank Zappa, could have created a song so utterly off the wall. Moving Waves” is a Keith Emerson doppelganger right down to its pseudo-classical piano and portentous vocals by resident genius Thijs van Leer. The passages Thijs has created roll out as a giant canvas for Jan Akkerman to color upon with bombastic tones as loud and punchy as an atomic blast yet fully in Jan's control as the blast settles into particles of drifting dust swirling and swaying, drifting and dancing back to earth. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

The side’s closing track is “Focus II,” an exact replica in miniature of “Hocus Pocus,” Focus’ theory being (I can only assume) that there’s no sin in flogging a dead horse so long as the horse in question won the Kentucky Derby while alive. Side two contains the 22-minute track "Eruption", a loose rock adaptation of the tale of Orpheus and Euridice from the opera Euridice by Italian composer Jacopo Peri. Such is also the case with "Eruption" which took up the whole of side 2 on the original LP and which sounds great on CD. According to BBC Radio DJ Bob Harris, demand was so great for Focus LPs by 1972 that the band’s British label, Polydor, simultaneously ran vinyl at all five of its record plants around the clock.Hocus Pocus” is a sublimely weird rondo that alternates among van Leer’s scat singing, whistling, and yodeling and Akkerman’s incendiary guitar work—a siren song for hard rock fans everywhere. It went on to peak at number 2 on the UK Albums Chart, [6] number 8 on the US Billboard 200, [7] and number 4 on the Dutch Album Top 100 chart.

But proof that Focus was capable of bending the time-space continuum can be found in the album’s opener—also the band’s biggest hit. The track is in fifteen distinct sections, and the suite opens with an uncredited melody from the opera L'Orfeo by Monteverdi. Focus II aka Moving Waves Unlike the debut album, that had the vocal version of Focus removed to be replaced by House of the King, this album was just renamed for international release. The guitar playing by Jan Akkerman is sublime as is the keyboard work of Thijs Van Leer and it is driven along by the superb Bass of Cyril Havermans and drums of Pierre Van Der Linden. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

Focus II was recorded from 13 April–14 May 1971 at Sound Techniques and Morgan Studios with Mike Vernon as their producer. From that point forward, Focus largely became an instrumental act, composed of highly compulsive personalities, seemingly hellbent on breaking down barriers between genres. Thijs Van Leer quì mette in risalto le sue doti migliori che lo contraddistingueranno nel corso degli anni con la band : eclettismo , polistrumentismo , follia e magia.