The concept album rears its head -- and rears back about 500 years. While other progressive rock groups were doing album-length suites dealing with apocalyptic themes,
Amazing Blondel were doing 20-minute multi-part pieces ("fantasia" is the best classical music term) depicting idealized love between man and woman, man and nature, and man and God. It all plays a little like
the Strawbs' work of this same era without the sardonic edge, and is all achingly beautiful. [The 1996 CD reissue is especially pleasing for eliminating the problem of surface noise that afflicted most copies of the original LP.]