Focus II
| Focus II (Moving Waves) |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||
| Studio album by Focus | ||||
| Released | October 1971 | |||
| Recorded | 13 April–14 May 1971 at Sound Techniques and Morgan Studios, London, England | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock, jazz fusion, hard rock, instrumental rock | |||
| Length | 41:40 | |||
| Label | Imperial Records | |||
| Producer | Mike Vernon | |||
| Focus chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| MelodicMusic | |
Focus II (better known as its reissued title Moving Waves) is the second studio album from the Dutch rock band Focus, released in October 1971 on Imperial Records. Following the departure of Martin Dresden and Hans Cleuver in 1970, the band recruited Cyril Havermans on bass and Pierre van der Linden on drums and proceeded to work on new material. The album includes "Hocus Pocus", the group's most successful single, and "Eruption", a 22-minute track based on the opera Euridice by Jacopo Peri.
Focus II was released to a mostly positive response. It remains one of the band's most commercially successful albums, reaching No. 2 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 8 on the US Billboard 200. "Hocus Pocus" was released as a single in 1971, but did not chart until 1973 when it reached No. 9 in the US and No. 20 in the UK. The album is certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales in excess of 500,000 copies.
The single "Hocus Pocus" was Focus' biggest hit and gained the band international popularity. The song, similar in some regards to the riff-driven hard rock of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, anticipated many aspects of 1980s heavy metal music, and especially the guitar work of Yngwie Malmsteen with Akkerman's use of the harmonic minor and Hungarian minor scales, uncommon in rock music in the early 1970s.
...
Wikipedia