Together with its direct successor, Out of the Blue, this is probably the album that forever defines the sound of the Electric Light Orchestra in the minds of most people. From this point, the rough-edged rock 'n' roll of earlier works like Ma Ma Ma Belle or the rather more reined back strings and whimsy of songs like Mr Radio would make way for these bigger, lusher and more 'cinematic' arrangements. This seemed to be a nod to the softer string sound in US soul, as the album's title and even its cityscape artwork suggests. It's rather like the difference between watching a film on TV at home, them going to see the same thing on a big screen in surround sound in a cinema. Neither is bad (quite the contrary), they are just different types of experience.