Auracle's City Slicker (1979)

For this follow up to Glider the keyboardist (John Serry, who set out on his own) was replaced by Biff Hannon.  Most of the remainder perform songwriting duties on various tracks.

The first side b track is shockingly beautiful, reminiscent to me of the best of our old British fusion discovery Simon and Bard.  The combination of fusion excitement and speed, classical education for interest and the warmth of the instruments (with the flugelhorn lead and synth soloing in the middle passage) is just killer for me:

More music like this please everyone.  A category 2 on its own there.  It's called City of Penetrating Light.  Note that it's the drummer Ron Wagner who wrote this, with his only other entry on discogs for a VA FM radio rock album from 1976.  Odd?  The next track, also his, is equally interesting but more jazzy.  Those two, well worth the price of admission (a few dollars).

Category IV, jazz-rock with some progressive moves, but overall, a strong album, perhaps due to the democratic engagement of all the musicians.  I mean, even the Samba track which closes out the album is way beyond the standard Brazilian garbage we are used to from so many useless conventional jazz records.

Desperately trying to be both listenable and creative, these guys acknowledged the popularity of fuzak while at the same time trying to appeal to the intelligent listener looking for original thinking.