After several years arguing with Decca about the rights of the group and a contract not yet expired, Andy Latimer manages to terminate the contract and, even more importantly, get all the rights over Camel's previous albums. He sells his house in London and goes to the United States where he settled permanently in California and uses his savings to found his own record company, Camel Productions, the idea is to record and distribute his future works and reissue all the previous ones. The latter that might seem less important is not if we consider that we are in 1988 and that a new support for music has just appeared, the CD. All the albums that Camel had sold to date (with Decca) were on vinyl, this means that almost all the Camel CDs that we have at home, all in their remastered versions, are already edited by Camel Productions.
Dust and Dream is a concept album based on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath book that deals with the first emigrants to the United States. He calls Colin Bass again, who will become “the other” fixed member of the band and Tom Scherpenzel, keyboardist of Kayak and meets with musicians.
The sound of Camel varies completely to what they had offered in their last works, finally abandoning the failed Alan Parsons sound for FM and returning in part to its origins, a very melodic disc and in some of its parts even atmospheric. The first feeling I had when I heard it (live) was as if it had been composed to support images or even some kind of documentary. The sound of Camel until now had been quite cohesive and homogeneous, despite the undoubted prominence of the Latimer-Bardens duo, especially the latter. The first albums of Camel are the work of a whole group and despite the almost permanent presence of the guitar of Latimer were the keyboards of Peter Bardens who moved the group and gave, especially based on the hammond organ a peculiar duality between Rock aggressiveness and calm and Symphonic developments.
Dust and Dream is a work thought, composed, developed and executed by Andy Latimer. His guitar acquires an absolute prominence from beginning to end and reaches the point of reinventing his own sound, both that of the band and his own. It is, without a doubt, a work much more symphonic than progressive, calmer than aggressive and that is winning in successive auditions. As for Latimer, his guitar covers the entire album; open, develop and close the themes and its sound also evolves. It continues to extend the notes like no other, in what is already its hallmark, but in general, in many places it is inevitable that names like David Gilmour come to mind.
The album opens with Dust Bowl, a simple melody of keyboards that gives way to Go West, one of the four songs sung on the album, the "old" voice of Latimer we are reeling the first stanzas on a base of keyboards which finally The guitar is joined by introducing us to the following Dusted Out theme, where keyboards once again star in the theme although this time not only as a mattress but also providing melody with the piano. Follow Mother Road that opens with the unmistakable sound of the guitar of Latimer, is another song sung and one of my favorites on the album, a song that is quickly hummed both in the sung part and the beautiful guitar melody, (classic Latimer sound ) both parts merge at the end of the theme to give way to Needless where atmospheric and ambient sound returns, in fact it is interpreted live with three keyboards (Scherpenzel-Bass-Latimer) and serves to introduce us to the next theme.
Rose of Sharon is a beautiful song and that may have become the most characteristic of the album due above all to something very unusual in Camel such as vocal games, performed here with great success, both in the contrast between female voices and masculine as in the different melodic developments that overlap. A beautiful and undoubtedly romantic theme
Then they repeat the formula that they had previously made, so Milk n 'Honey is another short theme in atmospheric or environmental line that serves to give way to End of the line, the fourth and last song sung of the album and, which in my It may seem to be one of the weakest parts of the album since neither the vocal melody nor the way of singing it by Latimer seems to me the most successful, as well as the drums that sound very flat and percussioned by very poorly played dishes.
From here would come what we could call the B side of the disc, the following eight themes are all instrumental and without cuts between them and as a whole they return to the environmental line, perhaps sometimes too much. So Storm Clouds is simply Latimer's guitar on a synthesizer beat that gives way to Cotton Camps. Here we have Camel in its purest form again, the unmistakable guitar, with very few notes in its initial part, to build a melody that will be repeated until the end of the song. It is followed by Broken Banks, which in its scarce 35 seconds develops another short tune of the house to merge with Sheet Rain, where the only thing that stands out is the slight appearance of the flute to link with Whispers that rescues an earlier melody with the keys. Little Rivers and little Rose returns to the previous ambient sound and prepares us for Hopeless Anger, where Camel finally gets disheveled. It is a theme that breaks abruptly with the sound of the previous songs, much more aggressive, and obviously progressive, one of the best songs on the album with a wonderful melody by the Latimer guitar that will remain in our heads during a time and that also includes the melody of the final part of Rose of Sharon, an excellent theme. To finish we would have only the beautiful ending by Whisper in the Rain, a beautiful epilogue for a great album.
Dust and Dream is one of the albums to which I have a special affection for several reasons. They are Camel (and just for that reason it is already a compelling reason), and they are after several years of silence and in which I thought the band had disappeared. For many years it was my favorite album of Camel of the 90s (along with Harbor of Tears) and even today it is / are two of the albums that most commonly sound on my stereo. This is why the easiest thing is that if I want to listen to music without masks or reproaches with this album I have it very easy.
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