Camel-The Single Factor (1982)

After the Camel Nude album, the band practically disappeared as such, only Andy Latimer would remain as the only official member of it.

Thus the things for the following work published in 1982 and titled The Single Factor (the title makes reference to that he is the only surviving dee of the mythical band), Latimer had to recruit many musicians, most of them belonging to the musicians' group of session of the albums of Alan Parsons Project, David Paton or Chris Rainbow, the members of the band Sky; Francis Monkman or Tristan Fry, the drummer Simon Phillips, the former Genesis Anthony Phillips or the keyboard player who collaborated on Nude; Duncan McKay, among other musicians.

In short, a true melting pot of musicians, which resulted in an amalgamation of sounds highly influenced by the sound of Alan Parsons. All you have to do is listen to songs like "A heart's desire" that seems to be taken from any of their albums, with the sweet voice of Chris Rainbow, and what to say about "Heroes", with the voice of David Paton, who seems to be taken from the APP's “the turn of a friendly card”.

What is perhaps most striking on this album is how short the songs are. It seems like a succession of singles destined for radio stations. And that was perhaps the idea of Latimer, in an attempt, futile, as was immediately evident, to achieve a sales success in the face of the public, once symphonic rock was being removed from the music scene with the arrival of the eighties. Aside from the song that opens the album, “No easy answer” that had some success, and that sounded somewhat even in the 40 Criminals, I mean Principales, the album went quite unnoticed, and was widely reviled by most of its followers, as a succession of songs easy and accessible to the general public, with very little quality from the point of view of symphonic rock, if we except perhaps the song "Sasquatch", coincidentally the only one in which the good of Bardens participates.

However, it should not be too hard since the album has quality in several of its songs. Especially in the commented Sasquatch, or in "Camelogue", "Selva" or the two songs that close the album "A heart's desire" and "End peace", and that is that Latimer always leaves the mark of the house on everything what it does.

For many at that time this was believed to be the last album

from a band that filled the symphonic rock scene with capital letters, but luckily they were wrong ...