42 One Dream Rush

Hemispheres is the sixth studio album by the Canadian rock band Rush, released on October 24, 1978, by Anthem Records in Canada and Mercury Records elsewhere. After the commercial and critical success of A Farewell to Kings (1977), the band returned to Rockfield Studios in Wales to record the follow-up with long-time co-producer Terry Brown. The recording process was notoriously difficult, with the band spending several weeks writing and arranging the material in the studio—a departure from their usual practice of entering sessions with completed songs. The album is considered a peak of the band's progressive rock period, characterised by complex time signatures and multi-part suites. The first side of the original vinyl is occupied by the 18-minute epic "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres", which concludes the story left as a cliff-hanger on A Farewell to Kings of a space explorer who is drawn into a black hole and is caught in a struggle between the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. These themes of duality are depicted on the cover artwork by Hugh Syme. Side two features the singles "Circumstances" and "The Trees", giving the band greater FM radio airplay, and concludes with the nearly ten-minute instrumental "La Villa Strangiato", which the band cited as their most technically challenging piece to record at the time. Upon release, Hemispheres reached No. 14 on both the Canadian and UK charts and peaked at No. 47 on the US Billboard 200. It was certified silver in the UK and eventually achieved platinum status in both Canada and the United States. While contemporary critics were divided over the complexity of the long-form tracks, retrospective reviews have hailed the album as a definitive progressive rock masterpiece. The intense sessions for the album left the band exhausted and directly influenced their subsequent shift toward the more concise, radio-friendly arrangements found on their next album, Permanent Waves (1980).