Rain Dances

The record

At a glance

Artist

Camel

Released

September 1977

Album

Fifth studio album

Recorded

Basing Street Studios, London

Tracks

Nine

Producer

Camel and Rhett Davies

Why it matters

Camel changes personnel without losing its melodic grammar

Rain Dances matters because Camel survives its first major personnel change by changing the music itself. Richard Sinclair does not imitate Doug Ferguson's grounded bass role, and Mel Collins is no longer an occasional touring colour. Their lighter rhythmic movement, distinctive voice and reeds reshape the space around Latimer and Bardens.

The album broadens the band without dissolving its identity. Brass, harp and Brian Eno's electronic contribution appear in carefully defined places, while Rhett Davies keeps the production transparent. Guest colour remains useful because Camel's melodic grammar is still unmistakable.

It also rejects one dominant form. Instrumental openers, concise vocal songs, ensemble jazz-rock and ambient miniature coexist across nine tracks. The variety documents a group deciding what it can become after the original quartet rather than pretending nothing has changed.

1977

A new bassist, a permanent reed voice

Doug Ferguson left Camel early in 1977 after Moonmadness and its touring cycle. Richard Sinclair, formerly of Caravan, became the new bassist and brought a supple style and an immediately recognisable singing voice. Mel Collins, already part of Camel's live expansion, joined the studio line-up on multiple reeds.

The band recorded from February through August at Basing Street Studios. Rhett Davies again co-produced with Camel, giving continuity to a project whose personnel and arrangements were changing. The longer schedule allowed a wider guest palette than the concentrated Moonmadness sessions.

Brian Eno contributed keyboards to Elke, harpist Fiona Hibbert appeared on the same piece, and Martin Drover and Malcolm Griffiths added brass to selected tracks. These additions point outward without turning Rain Dances into a producer-led collaboration.

The Rain Dances line-up

The quartet opens into an ensemble

Sinclair changes both the lower register and the vocal character. His bass can bounce around Ward's accents rather than anchoring them in straight lines, and his warm, conversational delivery makes Metrognome and Tell Me sound unlike earlier Camel songs.

Collins gives the arrangements a second melodic lead that can be airy, conversational or sharply rhythmic. Clarinet makes Tell Me intimate; saxophone pushes the ensemble pieces toward jazz-rock; flute extends rather than duplicates Latimer's established colour.

Latimer and Bardens respond by specialising and crossing roles. Latimer plays fretless bass on Tell Me and bass on Skylines, while Bardens supplies much of the album's compositional frame. Ward adapts to the more mobile bass and reed writing without sacrificing the band's sense of narrative pacing.

Sound and construction

Lighter surfaces, more mobile rhythm

Rain Dances is brighter and more rhythmically porous than Moonmadness. Sinclair leaves air inside bass figures, Collins can phrase across the bar line, and Davies separates those movements clearly. The music feels less like four parts converging on a climax and more like an ensemble circulating energy.

The vocal tracks are compact but not uniform. Sinclair's voice softens Metrognome and Tell Me, while Latimer's delivery on Highways of the Sun and Unevensong is more exposed. Harmonies allow the new and familiar identities to coexist inside one sequence.

The instrumental pieces explore several scales. First Light grows from atmosphere into a broad opening statement; One of These Days I'll Get an Early Night uses brass and reeds for buoyant collective motion; Elke removes the rhythm section almost entirely; Skylines restores muscular jazz-rock drive.

Weather operates as sonic behaviour rather than a strict concept. Light, roads, uneven balance, sky and rain give the titles a shared field, while the arrangements move from clear horizon to turbulence and finally into the title track's suspended close.

Track guide

Nine routes through the weather

Nine related climates

Movement, distance and unstable balance

Rain Dances is not a narrative concept album. Its coherence comes from movement through environments: first light, metropolitan measure, highways, uneven balance, skylines and rain. Titles repeatedly place human feeling against a changing external field.

Communication runs through the vocal pieces. Tell Me asks directly, Highways of the Sun connects motion with possibility, and Unevensong makes partnership audible through unequal voices and rhythms. The lyrics do not supply one storyline, but they share an awareness that balance must be negotiated.

The instrumentals widen that argument beyond language. Ensemble motion can create community, Elke can suspend it and the title track can let separate sounds coexist without collision. The album's central subject is less weather itself than adaptation.

The sleeve

Rain made graphic and weightless

The sleeve reduces rain to a clean visual idea: repeated droplets, reflective surfaces and cool colour. Its graphic lightness matches an album whose complexity is often carried by spacing rather than by dense symphonic mass.

Unlike the figurative Moonmadness cover, Rain Dances does not ask the viewer to identify a face or character. Pattern becomes the subject, echoing the way rhythm and recurring timbres hold nine varied tracks together.

The title's plural is important. There is no single storm or mood. The package prepares a sequence of movements, each with a different weight, that nevertheless belongs to the same climate.

Release history

A changed Camel enters the late seventies

Rain Dances appeared in September 1977 through Gama and Decca. It was Camel's fifth studio album and the first to feature Sinclair and Collins as central recorded voices, placing the personnel change directly before the audience rather than disguising it.

Highways of the Sun was issued in edited form as a single. Its concise melodic design represented one side of the album, while the instrumental ensemble pieces demonstrated that the new accessibility did not eliminate improvisatory or jazz-rock ambitions.

The touring band carried this broader palette into concerts documented on A Live Record. The album therefore belongs to an active stage transition, not merely a studio experiment with guests.

After 1977

The hinge between two versions of the band

Rain Dances has become the hinge between Camel's original quartet period and the more fluid line-ups that followed. Its importance lies in making change audible: Sinclair and Collins are not replacements hidden inside an old design but reasons for a new one.

The record also shows how naturally the Canterbury scene could enter Camel's vocabulary through personnel rather than imitation. Sinclair's phrasing and Collins's reeds bring associations with Caravan and jazz-rock, yet Latimer's melodic restraint and Bardens's harmonic voice remain intact.

Breathless would extend the Sinclair-era songfulness while bringing further keyboard changes and the end of Bardens's tenure. Rain Dances is the more balanced first step, still open enough to let every new colour announce what it can do.

Which edition?

Keep the nine-track design in view

Keep the nine original tracks together on a first listen. The title piece is a deliberately small ending after Skylines, and bonus material can obscure that contraction of scale.

The historical mix is the clearest introduction to Davies's airy production. Focus on Sinclair's bass placement, the changing reed register and the way guest instruments enter without widening every track in the same manner.

Use live material to hear how the studio's carefully separated colours became a more physical stage ensemble. The comparison is especially revealing for First Light and the brass-and-reed momentum of One of These Days I'll Get an Early Night.

A listening path

Follow the bass, reeds and open spaces

1. First pass: Follow the original sequence as alternating vocal intimacy and instrumental expansion.
2. Second pass: Track Richard Sinclair's bass and voice as the clearest markers of the new Camel.
3. Third pass: Map Mel Collins's changing roles across alto, tenor, soprano, clarinet and flute.
4. Then continue: Move to Breathless to hear the same transitional era lean further into concise songs and a changing keyboard identity.

Research trail

Sources and further reading

• Camel history, 1964–1981 — Camel Productions
• Rain Dances official catalogue record — Universal Music
• Rain Dances credits and track programme — Qobuz
• Rain Dances credits and recording history — AllMusic