Omega – Gammapolis – Vinyl LP

Coloured Vinyl, Reissue, Limited Edition

• Colorful vinyl limited to 500 units – let us surprise you • Rock band formed in 1962 in Budapest, which has been described as the most successful Hungarian rock band in history. • They have won several prestigious awards for their contributions to Hungarian culture. • Their 1969 song „Gyöngyhajú lány“ (“Pearls In Her Hair”) was an international hit, and was later covered by e.g. The Scorpions (“White Dove”) and Kanye West („New Slaves“). // Logically, Omega did not plan to divide their career into genre phases at the time. Music journalists and fans – and especially statisticians – did that later. According to their interpretation, the second half of the seventies was the Space Rock era of the Hungarian band. It is represented by the trilogy “Time Robber” (1976), “Skyrover” (1978) and finally “Gammapolis” (1979). Although spherical sounds could already be heard in the work of the Budapest quintet before and after this, Omega only really showed themselves to be so conceptually focused on this triple.

If you take the successful LP “Time Robber as a measure of quality, “Gammapolis” could easily keep up. The compositions of the group around singer Jànos Kòbor had become more melancholic, the bittersweet melodies more flattering. This was especially true of the seven-minute opener “Dawn In The City” (“Hajnal a város felett”), the title track “Gammapolis” and “Silver Rain” (“Ezüst eső”).

Apart from the vocals and the language, there are some minor differences between the Western European, English-language version and the Hungarian “original” in the order of the tracks and the length of the songs. Minimally, Omega let the instrumental passages of some songs flow longer on the native language version. For the Western European Omega record buyers, however, these subtle differences were irrelevant, as most of them were not even familiar with the Hungarian songs. Nor would they have noticed that “Gammapolis” was the best-selling LP of the band’s career in Omega’s home country, selling almost three quarters of a million copies.

However, the German cover artwork differed considerably from the Hungarian version: while the Bacillus/Bellaphon version showed the silhouettes of the musicians against a night sky cut by anti-aircraft searchlights, the Pepita album apparently depicted a futuristic but barren world on an alien planet.

Side A
1 Dawn In The City
2 Lady Of The Summer Night
3 Rush Hour
4 Return Of The Outcast

Side B
1 Start
2 Gammapolis
3 The Man Without A Face
4 Silver Rain
5 Gammapolis