What little information can be found on From the Sun to the World is futile. A giant eagle on the front, a likely bootleg ripping four random tracks and released when Balance of Power failed to make a splash. Strange times for the Electric Light Orchestra, but any chance to crack on with more material from the Jeff Lynne-fronted group is, usually, quite a treat. Some odd spin of ELO II, perhaps. Whatever this is, it works quite nicely. Rips and pieces from the stage and studio cobbled together, reminding listeners how far the band had come. Bootlegs are an easy way of getting to grips with how a band fares live. But these are moments which will never come again. From the Sun to the World serves as a pocket of history, albeit one hard to hunt down.
This is not a live album, either. This is a rinsing of fans who were conned into buying an inferior version of ELO II. Not much can be done to make it worse but even then, From the Sun to the World is packaged as a non-specific product with a track removed and a nothing image on the front. This is the darker side of bootlegging which, thanks to the digitisation of files and unreleased tracks, is now avoided. Something is off about From the Sun to the World but for the passing fan, it is tricky to pin it down. The tracklist is more or less unchanged, except for an absent Kuiama. No major loss, then. ELO II is more a package to highlight Roll Over Beethoven than anything. Dedicated fans may rip Momma… from this as well, but ultimately the bootlegging service done by From the Sun to the World is futile.
Do not get your hopes up about alternate versions or surprises within. There is nothing. Just a cheap grab from around the time the band was on their way out. Just a year after this release and the band would have dissolved, Lynne was no longer interested in parading the synth woes of Balance of Power. We are all the better for his decision to call time on the band, though the spin-offs and other variants of ELO to follow are as brutal to listen to, as half-baked, as From the Sun to the World. Even with a stronger sound present when compared to their self-titled debut, the space-like rock of their second record is not strong enough to counter the at-the-time modern synth structure of Balance of Power or the dark horse release, Secret Messages.
Whatever the case, if you want to hear ELO II but with one less song, this is it right here. From the Sun to the World highlights a lazy aspect of bootlegging which was always going to be part of the scene. A long con of re-releasing works from the studio, or jacked-up live versions with reduced sound quality, and no changes anywhere else. Mama and From the Sun to the World feature on the B-Side rather than in the correct order of ELO II, so perhaps there is some variance. Listening in a different order will do very little to bolster the sales of this all-but-forgotten bootleg experience. From the Sun to the World is a novel item now, something which can be cast from the mind just as soon as it is stumbled upon.
