Juggular's Balls! (1980)

A happy group of artists by the looks of it, aren't they?  Amused by their non-joke, perhaps?

As you can see, the band's name is Juggular (jugular vein + juggler, presumably) and the title of their sole LP is Balls! with an exclamation mark, like when you're texting and you're a teenager but without the dumb emoticons.  Doesn't happen to readers of this blog I'm sure.  Anyways, the whole is a little silly, but typical of the times, as we all know.  And my wife's comment is probably apposite: 'because they were all stoned in those days.'

What the music is, which is what we're interested in, is smooth fusion, all instrumental, maybe a little like Auracle, with slight progessiveness here and there.  For sure it's good and enjoyable if the style appeals to you, not over the top in commercialese.  A positive point is there's NO song with a hispanic title using those simple 3-chord progressions typical of Cuban or Spanish music.  I'd go so far as to say what the hell is wrong with these people? They didn't include a "Viva Cariba!" song with those out of tune steel drums or a bossa nova song with women shouting "tititi! ariba!"??

In terms of progressive fusion the clear standout is Dragonseed:

With many or a handful of other songs (if you have lost a few fingers) that resemble it in odd originality, making this a clear category 4 (mostly ordinary fusion with one track or a few tracks progressive-ish-- whatever that means.)