Mirage

Released March 1, 1974 via Deram, Mirage is Camel's second album and their first for Decca's progressive imprint, produced by David Hitchcock and cut in November 1973 across Island, Decca and AIR Studios in London, with Bill Price among the engineers. The sleeve borrowed its look from the American cigarette packet that shares the band's name, the brand GIs and movie gangsters smoked.

Four players carry it: Andrew Latimer on guitars, flute and vocals, Peter Bardens on organ, Mellotron, Minimoog and piano, Doug Ferguson on bass, Andy Ward on drums. The sound is symphonic sweep crossed with jazz fusion, Latimer's guitar weeping and soaring while Bardens' keyboards roll in like weather. "Nimrodel/The Procession/The White Rider" takes its subject from The Lord of the Rings, flute leading the procession toward Gandalf's return, and "Lady Fantasy" closes side two at close to thirteen minutes, passing the lead between guitar and keyboards through section after section. Between them sit the opener "Freefall," the flute showcase "Supertwister" and the long build of "Earthrise."

Pastoral English whimsy with muscle under it. Mirage missed the UK chart on release and reached No. 149 on the Billboard 200, where it stayed for thirteen weeks. Its standing grew over the decades that followed: Rolling Stone ranks it 21st among essential prog albums, and Prog's readers voted it into their all-time Top 100.

LP, new and sealed.