начинаем серию релизов великолепной голландской прог-группы, причем в лучшем звуке - издания EMI 1988
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Review by Richie Unterberger
Focus' debut album is gentler and more low-key and vocal-oriented than their subsequent efforts; fans of Jan Akkerman's pyrotechnics may be disappointed by his relatively restrained presence, but others may be pleasantly surprised to find a more economic group than they remember. A fair collection of progressive rock tunes without a clear focus, the material is dominated by Thijs Van Leer, often introducing classical sensibilities. But at least as often, it sticks with fairly conventional period folk-rock and blues influences, with occasional jazzy shadings. Akkerman's "House of the King" is the most accurate Jethro Tull imitation ever recorded.



Good beginnings for a great prog band, March 3, 2002
Reviewer: BENJAMIN MILER (Eugene, OR United States)
In & Out of Focus is not bad for a debut by one of the biggest prog rock bands to come out of the Netherlands (same country that also gave us bands like Earth & Fire, Ekseption, Trace, Finch, Alquin, Supersister, Kayak, etc.). Of course the sound of this album has not been fully developed, and there are several pop oriented numbers like "Black Beauty". This is also by far their most vocal dominated album. There are a couple of cuts that showed the more progressive direction the band will quickly move to. One is the instrumental opening, "Focus", and the other is "Anonymous" which I think works a lot better than Focus 3's "Anonymous II" because it's shorter allowing the band to focus (no pun intended) better. "House of the King" is a totally wonderful and cathy Jethro Tull-like number that was later featured on the LP version of Focus 3, because the American LP version of In & Out of Focus did not feature that cut (but the European version did). Also the US version of this LP did not feature "Sugar Island" either. The IRS CD reissue features the American cover but all eight of the European tracks. Regardless, this is a nice and listenable album, but much better things were to come to this band with their followup Moving Waves.