Anima Mundi - Septentrion ($14.99)
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Anima Mundi - Septentrion ($14.99)Brilliant symphonic progressive recorded in 2001 by this 7-person Cuban band. There’s really not much
Latin about their music. At it’s core it is 1970’s progressive rock sung
in Spanish, with some of the neo-prog energy, but Anima Mundi adds original
elements that make their music unique. Most importantly, the band has two people
playing Galician bagpipes. When these two musicians aren’t playing pipes, they’re often playing recorder or tin whistle. So you have a Genesis-derived
symphonic rock which at various times features majestic bagpipes, some early
music elements ala Gryphon or Gentle Giant, and finally, some Vangelis-style
symphonics. It is all exuberant and uplifting, with excellent vocals in Spanish,
and it lasts 71-minutes with no filler!
Gamadion is the 2004 debut by this Mexican progressive rock band. Most
of the album is instrumental and comes from the quartet of keys, guitar, bass
and drums. The music gets stronger toward the end of the album where there are
guest vocalists and a guest on violin and viola. It’s competently played, but Arbatel belong to the crowded
field of current young prog bands with almost no songwriting skills or ability to write anything memorable.
It’s probably unfair to pick on Arbatel when there are so many bands today with
the same shortcoming, but some have even suggested that Arbatel capture the essence of the early 1970’s
Italian scene. We don’t know which early 1970’s Italian scene they were
listening to. Put another way, it’s easy to mimic the sound of Genesis (or
Yes or ELP, etc.), but that doesn’t make one Genesis. You have to have a clue how to write a song, then
you can expand that into something larger. To find the audio samples, click on the mp3 icon above, enter
the Flash site, then click on the Sonidos button.
Cabezas
de Cera - Hecho en México ($12.99)
This is a 2007 live CD with excellent audio quality from this adventurous Mexican instrumental band blending
folk/ethnic elements and fusion into an original style of progressive rock. They
combine acoustic instruments with electric/electronic, including sax and other wind
instruments, guitar, Stick, drums and more. The CD comes in an elaborate
digipack including a slipcase. 70-minutes.
Cast -
com.union ($13.99)
Cast - Al-Bandaluz (2CD, $19.99)
Cast - Imaginary Window ($13.99)
Cast - Four Aces ($13.99)The new Cast double-CD Originallis is due in stock soon. As steady as a click track, Cast carry on making albums, so regularly that you have the feeling this Mexican band has always been a part of progressive rock. It could even have been so, if only a lack of funds had not forced them to wait 20 years before they could release their works. Now with a huge catalog of CDs and as promoters of the Baja Prog festival in Mexicali, Alfonso Vidales and company could easily take some well-deserved rest. Instead, 2003’s double-CD Al-Bandaluz showed that Cast is far from reaching the end of its musical evolution, as a new line-up injects new life into the band. You'd think that any band that had been around this long would have peaked by now, but this album exceeds their previous work, more instrumental and more complex than any before, with little if anything that could be called neo-prog. Instead, Cast is influenced primarily by 1970’s Genesis but ranging quite a bit wider than that, including PFM, Camel, and other classic prog bands. Vidales has yet to get the recognition he deserves as both player and composer; he really is in the top tier of progressive rock keyboardists. This is an essential prog album.
Nimbus (2004) is a massive CD at 79-minutes. No matter how high Cast set the bar with each album, the next one invariably exceeds it. With male and female vocals in both English and Spanish and improved production, Nimbus showcases a band at the peak of their abilities. There isn’t a real songwriter in the band, so they concentrate on what they do best: lengthy tracks of sophisticated symphonic progressive in the classic style, with lots of instrumental content. The addition of a full-time woodwinds player (lots of flute) and a slight new-found jazz influence have taken their style to the next level. Really, Nimbus ranks with all but the top tier of 1970’s progressive bands (though a small amount of metal guitar betrays it as a modern album).
The double-CD Mosaïque (2006) shows that Cast is as prolific as ever. Four of the tracks are older, previously-unreleased compositions, and the rest are new. This new work goes beyond even the remarkable quality level of Al-Bandaluz and Nimbus, featuring lots of woodwinds (flute, clarinet, sax), male and female vocals, and nothing that can be called neo-prog. There is a pastoral, renaissance feel at times, while other material is reminiscent of the top South American 1970’s prog bands. The new material is sung in Spanish, while two of the older compositions are in English. Cast established themselves as the premier Mexican progressive band a long time ago, now they must be considered among the top progressive bands worldwide. Highest recommendation.
With surprising reliability, Cast have a new CD ready in time for each year’s Baja Prog festival in March. And every year, one wonders whether Cast can top the previous CD, and they invariably do. Com.union (2007, 70-minutes) begins in the familiar Cast style of old, with attractive bits strung together, though one gets the sense the bits could be rearranged in any order and the song could stop at any time and it would matter little. But this soon gives way to a further development of the more sophisticated style Cast have been developing over the past few albums. The bulk of com.union is 1970’s-oriented, devoid of neo-prog, with a slight jazz influence typical of 70’s prog bands but usually absent from neo-prog. The big difference is that Cast have learned to leave enough space in the music for it to breathe and to flow naturally, a more organic sound that contrasts with their earlier everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. With the vocals now in Spanish throughout, several tracks sound very close to Italian 70’s progressive, others to the first-generation Argentine progressive bands or to certain 70’s Spanish prog bands (minus the flamenco). It seems to take Cast’s live shows a few years to catch up to their studio work, but on record at least, Cast is world-class.
Landing is the 2006 reissue of the first Cast CD Landing in a Serious Mind (1994, 69-minutes) with a new cover and booklet. Even on their debut, Cast was already an impressive symphonic progressive band (except lyrically). The Marillion and IQ influence was never more than a minor part of Cast’s style, and those who called them a neo-prog band probably never bothered to actually listen.
The rest are the Cast studio albums currently in stock:
Infinity (2002, 70-minutes), Legacy (2000, 73-minutes), Imaginary
Window (1999, 67-minutes), Beyond Reality (1996, 62-minutes), Endless Signs (1995,
66-minutes), Four Aces (1995, 63-minutes), Third Call (1994,
64-minutes), and Sounds of Imagination (1994, 68-minutes). Start with the latest albums and work backwards.
Elfonia -
This Sonic Landscape ($14.99)
Elfonia is a modern progressive rock band out of Mexico whose main attraction
is female singer Marcela Bovio. She can also be heard singing on Ayreon’s The
Human Equation and Stream of Passion’s Embrace the Storm CDs, and Arjen Lucassen returns the favor with a guitar solo on
one song here. Elfonia’s keyboardist Alejandro Millán is also a member of Stream
of Passion. Marcela has a beautiful voice with a great range, able to sound
angelic one moment and powerful the next. The rest of the band consists of
keyboards/concertina, guitars, bass, and drums, with Marcela also adding some
violin. This Sonic Landscape (2005) is their 2nd album, and it is quite similar
to the Stream of Passion album. The production is
excellent and the music is not what we’ve come to expect out of Mexico. Because
of the female voice, Elfonia sounds closer to several European bands. Elfonia does have a gothic element and there are some heavy guitar
riffs, but metal is only a minor aspect of their style. Overall their sound is dark but lush symphonic progressive with
touches of jazz and folk. Lyrics in both English and Spanish. 57-minutes, digipack.
Estigia -
Profundos Mares ($14.99)
Prog-metal band singing in Spanish, released in 2005 on the Chilean Mylodon
label. Crunchy guitar, double-pedal drumming, symphonic keys, exactly the same
as on every other prog-metal album.
Iconoclasta - Adolescencia Cronica ($9.99)
SALE!
Iconoclasta
is a Mexican instrumental progressive band and one of the most important from
that country. Their influences may include ELP,
Yes, and National Health, but Iconoclasta also include fusion and traditional
Mexican music. These are the CD reissues of Adolescencia Cronica (1988) and En Busca de Sentido
(1989), their 4th and 5th albums. While their subsequent albums are a bit fatiguing
to listen to, Iconoclasta were still a good band on these two.
Praxis was an offshoot of Iconoclasta, and this 1987 album is their only one.
This instrumental album is one of the best progressive rock records from Mexico,
similar to but more intense than Iconoclasta, with stunning duels between guitar
and keyboards. The tempo is usually fast. You have to subtract a point for the
sound of the keyboards and drums, but otherwise this is a great one.
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Metaconsciencia
- Bestiario ($11.99)
SALE!Metaconsciencia is a Mexican band in existence since 1996, and Bestiario is their 2003 debut.
Two guitar players (Ricardo Moreno also plays a few keyboard parts) and a rhythm
section (bass/drums) create a warm, colorful instrumental music that mixes
eclectic influences: 1970’s progressive rock, jazz-rock, and Mexican music. You
could lump this in with more recent Iconoclasta. It is a player’s album, not a
writer’s album -- there’s nothing that qualifies as a song here -- and the
tracks were recorded live in the studio. One guitar player is usually playing
acoustic or classical guitar. The other is sometimes soloing in hard rock guitar
mode (distorted tone, lots of notes, no point) but more often with a warmer jazz
guitar tone. When the classical and jazz guitar technique shines through, or
when you can hear the Mexican music underneath, Metaconsciencia are at their
best. 61-minutes.
Musica d’Repuesto - aV abuC (Variaciones en la Cuerda Vol. 5) ($8.99)
SALE!This is a very good, mostly-instrumental King Crimson style band from Cuba,
also reminding one of the French band Tiemko at times. There are also touches of
Present or Univers Zero. The album is a collection
of their best music, recorded in 1993. 53-minutes.
Naranja Mecánica - 1993-1995 ($9.99)
SALE!A surprisingly good album out of Cuba. Naranja Mecánica play a 1970’s style
progressive rock sounding closest to a mix of Jethro Tull and Banco, with
influences of King Crimson, Van der Graaf Generator, and various other 70’s
Italian and South American bands. There are vocals in Spanish but instrumental
passages dominate. In addition to the standard keys/guitars/bass/drums lineup,
they use flute extensively.
Nirgal Vallis - Y Murio la Tarde ($15.99)CD reissue of an excellent Mexican symphonic progressive record from 1985,
plus 28-minutes of bonus tracks recorded in 1995. This was the band led by José Luis Fernández Ledesma
Q.
Perfume de Mujer - El
Monólogo de él Carocol ($8.99)
SALE!El Monólogo de él Carocol is the latest from this long-lived Cuban
progressive band, recorded between 1997-2000, continuing their blend of
progressive rock and avant-garde tendencies, mostly instrumental, with some
decent vocals. Actually, if you ignore the 21-minute improv toward the end of
the disc, most of this is no more ‘difficult’ than King Crimson or Gentle
Giant, both of which are influences, but the level of originality here is very
high. Perhaps surprisingly for a Cuban band, there’s very little here that
could be called Latin, and the arrangements are as sophisticated as the best
European prog bands. With a playing time of 70-minutes, there’s still an
album’s worth of quality progressive rock here. The material on Pollos d’Granja
was recorded between 1995-1998 and uses Spanish vocals, violin, keyboards, guitars, bass and drums.
Surprisingly good! 75-minutes.
Sintesis - En Busca de una Nueva Flor ($15.99)This is the CD reissue of a legendary 1978 album plus two bonus tracks. Not only the best progressive rock record from Cuba, this is one of the best from all of Latin America. It has influences of Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd, and Italian progressive.
“Prog from Cuba that is as good as the best from
England, Italy, and Spain. The music on En Busca De Una Nueva Flor
reminds me a bit of the Spanish prog band Crack. The listener is treated to tons
of classically-inspired themes led by Moog, piano, and even harpsichord, along
with guitar, bass, and drums. There is a romantic Latin American feel to many of
the themes that will mostly appeal to fans of Italian prog. The Spanish vocals,
both male and female, are also excellent and vary from solo, to choir, to
male/female unison. Sintesis produced one of the top albums from the late-70’s
prog scene.” [Steve Hegede / Zoltan’s Progressive Rock Webpage]
Various Artists - Musicas Geometricas ($8.99)Eight different musicians contribute avant-garde/experimental pieces to this
collection on the Luna Negra label.
