Pegauro Volume 1 (Mexico 1982) [no download available]

There's nothing like galactic nebulae as an album cover, I love it to death, reminding me of my childhood spent looking through telescopes and reading about space-- just like the track I quoted some time back by Peter Berkow about 'my first telescope, and my father said he'll be a physicist someday...'

I'll interrupt the regularly scheduled programming which was actually nothing at all to bring you this superb find from my collector friend.  We know that Mexico produced some surprisingly wonderful progressive music in the past (and even currently), as I've mentioned before, consider Jorge Beltran's Humus album from prognotfrog for example, or Mandragora, Flught, Chac Mool, Iconoclasta in the field of fusion, etc.  So a find like this, shockingly rare but excellent, should not be altogether too surprising.


Let's consider first the last track, called Opus 1, which to me is a definition of progressive rock in its all too short course.  We start with a functionally atonal riff on the guitar, which is punctuated by the power chord in C with added 9th on the guitar that moves up to a D colored by some wonderful synthetic keyboards.  Pay attention to how much physical exercise that drummer is getting, chopping his drumset to pieces. Again, the usual comments in my prog analysis: the minor seconds, the tritones, the sudden tempo changes, the gratuitous dissonances carefully placed.  When the vocals begin however, note that the song completely changes direction, as well as key-- though there can't really be a precise key since it's simply demented singing on top of furious guitar and bass riffs.  This is just pure creativity, gorgeous in its naked and pure energy.  Here there is no debt to the record companies, no respect for the establishment, we have pure subversive art in its finest form, playing without rules, expressing without concern, without consideration for any taught method and education, a beautiful curse yelled at the whole edifice of musical stereotypes, and the lazy habits and cliches that so plague every art-- not just music.
And follow what happens half way through the song when suddenly we think we're listening to something entirely different, there is a modulation into what sounds to me like F minor, with fuzzy bass underscoring some weaving guitar patterns evoking clouds passing by, a storm, perhaps the roiling ocean, with that percussionist by now sounding like he should have tendonitis in both elbows-- and both sides of them, medial and lateral.  Pure genius.  In one 8-minute track you have all the lessons of progressive rock and all the teachings of the masters...





I will disappoint you by stating the remainder of the record is not up to the same insane standard, though the instrumental that closes side one called "Jardin de Pegauro" is also a marvellous progressive outing.

For those who are seeking more information, here is the discogs entry.  Notice that the composer of the above track appears nowhere else, his name is Jose Luis Lara G.  Rateyourmusic provides us with a short review but not much else.  It is true (as he says) that it recalls the earlier psych music of for ex. Proyecto A with its rough sound and fuzzy guitars.

For those who would like to hear the entirety of this I will have to ask them to wait (as with Dreamworld Gates, and Mosaic) or purchase a copy of this hard-to-find record and perhaps it will be more widely available in the future-- though I think I can guarantee we will not be seeing Sony reissue this one on compact disc anytime soon...  But I wouldn't bet against it from now until the nebulae on the cover above are dismantled by the accelerating expansion of the universe that is the long-term fate of our cosmos.  For now, we can forget about such concerns and sit back and listen to the singer and marvel at how these kids created something so extraordinarily unique and perversely beautiful, making it probably the only song of its kind in said universe we exist in...

Oh of course, needless to say, I doubt there is a volume 2 out there...