Pressure Points

These last few weeks, while listening to the music of Camel, I decided to get the dvd of their live concert Pressure Points. It was my first live concert of Camel and it had a huge impact on me at that time. And now I just wanted to know why. Was it the fact that it was my first concert ever? Was it the fact that it was in a relative small space and the sound was overwhelming? Or was it the music itself?

Last week I got the dvd and now I know it was the music itself. The concert was called Pressure points and now I know why. The concert was mainly about their album Stationary Traveller wich has the instrumental Pressure Points. On their album it is a relatively short track, but during the concert it is very much extended. And it takes you in an unescapable atmosphere right away. There is no turning back.

That is very much what I felt back then and that is what I felt now, when I listened to the music again. And while I was working on The story of the Snow Goose, I noticed the similarity with both albums. As I see it, Stationary traveller is the zooming in on the process of what was already pointed at in The Snow Goose.

The discovery of a powerful free will, but with the realisation of taking full responsibility for every action. It is the transformation that only can take place in absolute honesty, when there is nothing left but the individual self, separate from all surroundings.

With Stationary Traveller this soulsearch takes a whole album and it is given the form of the divided Berlin, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The concert is recorded in 1984, so at that time the Wall was still very present. I will try to give my impression of the whole concert in another blogpost, but here is the beginning of the dvd on a Youtube video.

It starts with an introduction which is not part of the concert itself, but gives a fascinating desire to look at what is real. You see the man, while dancing with the woman, loosing his mask.

And than Pressure Points starts.