Colin Bass from Camel

On December 1st 2018 the great Colin Bass, a member of the legendary group Camel, appeared live on stage in concert in Legionowo.

It has been fifty years since the world first heard of Colin. The musician returns with the vinyl edition of the album ‘An Outcast of the Islands’, which – after twenty years – is still an unforgettable achievement.

In 1968 he started his musical career in the group ‘Krisis’ . In the seventies he went on to experiment musically with the Velvet Opera, Clancy and alongside Steve Hillage.

In 1978 Colin Bass joined Camel, and over the next three years the band recorded the albums ‘I Can See Your House From Here’ (on which he co-created the hit ‘Your love is stranger than mine’) as well as ‘Nude’, a renown conceptual art album about a Japanese soldier. In 1981 Colin decided to take a break from the group, returning in 1984 following the completion of the amazing album ‘Stationary Traveller’, and completed a worldwide concert tour, captured on the complimentary concert album ‘Pressure Point’. A year later the group parted.

This turned out to be not an entirely fruitlesss period. The bassist quickly settled into the group 3 Mustaphas 3, whose music was inspired from the furthest regions of Africa. Then Colin appeared as Sabah Habas Mustapha, and under this psuedonym recorded as many as 14 solo albums, among which can be found the hit Denpasar Moon, recorded in 1993 in Indonesia. This turned out to be so successful that fifty cover versions of it have been recorded, and the record itself achieved a circulation of a few hundred thousand copies! Colin, or maybe Sabah, spent a few years on Java Island.

Since 1991 Colin’s fortunes have been linked with Camel. After more musical successes the time came for Sabah Habas Mustapha to play solo progressive rock.

‘An Outcast of the Islands’ was recorded partly in California, and partly in Poland with the participation of the other Camel band members – Andy Latimera and Dave Stewarta as well as other Polish musicians: The Polish jazz legend Wojciech Karolak and the music of Quidam: Jacek Zasada, Zbyszek Florek, Maciej Meller (currently playing from Riverside) and Marcin Błaszczyk and Szymon Brzeziński from Abraxas and background singer Emilia Derkowska. Later Colin played many times the Poles, and in 2005 recorded the album “Planetarium” with Józef Skrzek from SBB.