Brustna Illusioner, a Swedish treasure from 1974 [no download, review only]

Now how about a really uninspired cover for a change?

But don't judge a prog album by its cover--because the inner soul of this record shines with a beautiful and long-shadowed light into the inner halls of the mind and, at least for me, will be remembered for a long time in those dark and cloistered passageways...

I will first thank the collector who shared this (as usual) expensive rarity and offer a song, the first and very representative:





I think I've mentioned before how often Scandinavian music features a melancholy substrate.   Altogether you will be reminded of the Greek Pete and Royce albums, with the oddish, languid and downtempo piano chords and the progressive angles here and there judiciously placed through the songwriting.  They truly get it over the top with the track called "Happy New Year:"






"There is no constellation and I feel sad-- oh--
everybody's gone, the last year has left for a new,
and I think it's bound to be bad..."

Notice how in the middle of the song, the drumset picks up and starts banging out a totally different song starting with a bass and fuzz guitar with this manic kind of duet chanting seemingly homeless-inspired, like a bum on a corner shouting out his clinical depression plus axis III (DSM-V) alcoholism, before we return to the same E minor we started with for an exhausted, spent recapitulation.  Does it get any better than this?  Brilliance.  Please-- everyone, let's all sing this song instead of the godawful Auld Lang Syne every new years eve from now on!

This is art at its finest: beauty and craziness, creative inspiration, the hollow echoey sound of the solo piano with the slightly off-kilter singing voice, plus a touch of tongue-in-cheek humour all rolled in one big fat luscious cabbage roll of a song... wow!  (In a song called "Duke of War" the lyrics start with "I hate the King of Norway...")

Notice there is a mix of swedish and English as was common from this country and Germany.  There are actually many Beatles influences (including their infamous backwards guitar solo that is, recorded to tape and tape played backwards) and some pop a la Pepe & Paradise. 

The last track is called "Stupid Record Company" and, again, I want to throw it out as a homage to the most slimy and disgusting, far-from-art form of art there is in this world altogether today, I speak of course of the music business:





Notice the great G minor intro chord with reverb and vibrato on the electric piano, with an initial melody that reminds me, suspiciously, probably unintentionally, of John Lennon's upgoing verse for Bungalow Bill.  But the lyrics are fabulous-- beyond brilliant.

"I've been writings songs for day and night, and I'm sending my work to the stupid record companies. 
Stupid record companies, why don't you like my music?
They say, 'no no no'...
I've been writing songs of life and death, and I've sent my work to the stupid record companies.
Stupid record companies, why don't you like my music?"

Why Indeed?  A question every unrecognized artist has asked themselves, but perhaps not with the same humour and skill as this songwriter.  Some database information here.  Notice there are copies for sale, and it generally sells from 100 to 300 USD, providing some measure of an explanation for why there is no download to follow in the nearest future.  But meanwhile can we provide some artistic justice and celebrate this magnificent set of songs for what it's truly worth, as a musical work of art?  Beg, steal or borrow, preferably the latter, to find this record, buy it if you have to, borrow it or trade something to get it, but believe me when I say it is worth hearing in its entirety...

The first of Kevin Fisher, another lost US progressive opus from 1975

This time, lazily, I'm going to pass it over to a user on rateyourmusic for a fairly accurate review:

" For some reason, judging by the homemade cover, I thought this baby was going to be an outing in progressive excesses ...  The leadoff instrumental 'Overture' didn't exactly change my impressions, but so much for first impressions ... 

So what do we know about namesake Kevin Fisher and 1977's 'The First of Fisher'?  Next to nothing.  It's clearly a home grown vanity project and what few references we can find indicate that only 75 copies were pressed.  As far as we know, this hasn't seen a CD reissue.  Technically the album has a fairly primitive sound, but in musical terms it's all over the spectrum.  The acoustic ballad 'Lullabye' has a heavy classical feel (Pentangle came to mind the first time we heard it), while 'Flying' sports a 1950s' vocal group feel and the horn-propelled "Pirate's Song" recalls a post-David Clayton Thomas Blood, Sweat and Tears.  Of course first impressions are seldom entirely wrong and in this case the second side sports some mundane progressive moves in the form of 'Indian Dance' and 'In Search'  Again it's fairly raw, but not without it's low-keyed charms, including the pretty ballad 'A House for Wendy'. "


He wasn't impressed perhaps, but I was really charmed by the aforementioned raw, DIY aspects.  Check out the first and to me quite stunning track, "Overture:"





While the final track, "The search" (for El Dorado) starts relatively  unpromisingly with an A minor riff featuring the descending chromatic blues scale, which we've heard before many times, but abruptly a smashing open or sustained guitar chord brings it to a halt and the insane singing starts up again, recalling to me my old favourite Karlos Steinblast:





So although a bit uneven, I think we as prog fans will not be overly disappointing at adding this album to our ever-expanding (and furthermore acceleratingly expanding) like the universe collections.  If only we were coterminous with said universe too!  Sadly there was no second of Fisher, though I wish there had been.

Notice how little comes up in a basic google search for this work.  So how come Tom missed this work on the cd reissue wishlist?  Well it seems he is lagging behind us a bit these days...

Tom's Metaphysical Animation from 1973, finally available!

Well, as the saying goes, we interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a huge surprise... someone out there, god bless the kind soul, ripped and shared this record freely with everyone, on youtube.  From my close sources, I believe they found a copy in a bin somewhere, contacted Tom, and just ran with it from then on...   For your benefit I will post a completed mp3 in the comments.  First of all let's review Tom's remarks from, almost two years ago now:

Part 1: The band Metaphysical Animation was first formed in 1968 in Gainesville, Florida, and later ended up in the Miami area. Their sound and lineup evolved gradually over this time, eventually coalescing around the core of guitarist Alberto de Almar and keyboardist Bill Sabella. They gigged around the small clubs of the area regularly, and by 1972 were ready to record an album. By then the lineup consisted of de Almar and Sabella, along with drummer Robbie Hanson and bassist Steve Margolis (another bassist, Larry Jessup, also played with them around this time). The album was recorded that same year at a professional studio in the area, over the course of one or two sessions. They had a test pressing made of it, but were never able to secure a record deal and soon disbanded. The musicians went their own separate ways, with Alberto de Almar ending up in another local band named Faustus, who opened up for some of the larger rock acts that toured the area. By 1976 they too had called it quits, and I believe de Almar then left Florida to pursue more advanced musical education elsewhere...

Less than 50 copies were pressed, housed in a plain white demo sleeve with the band name hand-written in pen on the cover. Now here's where we get to the most amazing part: It's a double LP set, clocking in at nearly 65 minutes in total! I'm not sure if I know of any other instance where an unreleased test press of an underground band like this was done as a double LP. Anyway it seems that they had a sort of uncompromising attitude and never really did try to market it too hard. After failing to be signed, they sold most of the few remaining copies at local gigs, which might account for why no other examples seem to have survived. A few comments on this album's actual discovery: The seller who ended up with this apparently dug it up in a warehouse find that may have been associated with the particular (long defunct) pressing plant where these LPs were actually made, which would explain how it managed to survive these 40 years at all. This lone copy was buried amongst a bunch of other test presses, all the rest of which were just various 45s of local radio jingles and other such ephemera...   
[please read the remainder]
On gnosis, of course, Tom notably gave it a 14/15 score.  Hard to believe.

Now quickly for my own review.  The album starts in a promising manner with some instrumental fusion/hard prog on Two Songs in Space and some unique chord changes, with the melody even featuring recurrent diminished chord breakdowns, but thereafter the track slacks off a bit with an E to D passage featuring electric guitar soloing that goes on a little too long.  Then to my utter shock, I heard him quote Norwegian Wood in the middle of said solo (about the three-minute mark).  So to me this was a bit of a negative omen:

But notice the interesting guitar effects, a la Jimi Hendrix in his late, post-Electric Ladyland manner (which appear throughout the album in fact).

The next track is a straight-out commercial ballad with Beatlesian chord changes, again a disappointment.  A few following tracks are interesting for myriad reasons, again, but interspersed in the progressive moments there are deeply disappointing ones too, as the blues song attests.  I can't possibly consider this a great record at all after listening to it some 3-4 times since last night, it's not as good as the wonderful Genre - Commercial Success, nor can it compare to recent Tom discoveries Ginga Rale Band and Rob Thomsett, it doesn't have the bite and originality of a true progressive masterpiece, like Swiss Island, or any ELP record, for that matter.  In general I feel the length is actually a bit of a drawback as it results in some self-indulgent noodling on the part of guitarist and organist, like the low protein to carbs ratio one finds in many cheap Chinese restaurants... Generally speaking it reminds me A LOT of the Flight album I posted a year ago with the quality being overtly comparable.

But I'm now going to shut up-- because you can, yourselves, be the judges.

Counterpoint from the US, 1982

This is a half-fusion half commercial rock enterprise from the early eighties to bide some time before my new computer arrives and I am able to restart ripping vinyl.  Of course this being the dog days of summer, the sense of urgency is completely absent and indeed it's as brown and desiccated as my front lawn...

...reviewed once by Tom on the cd reissue of course...

Lothlorien's Two LPs, ST (1980), and Spaces (1983)

It's a popular name for a band, for obvious reasons (though I must confess I am one of those few people on planet Earth who, as a child, never read the books, and as an adult, never saw one of the movies-- nor even expressed the desire to do so).

It might be obvious by now that this is my favourite subgenre of progressive music: European classical chamber music combined with the modern excitement and energy of jazz and rock.  The former seems almost sterile and dry, like traditional French cuisine with its lack of spices, while the latter forms alone seem to me like junk food, without any finesse or thought.  So the combined effect of the best progressive music is both intellectual and emotional in what it brings to our level of enjoyment, think for example of the best thought-out, best-laid plans of Genesis tracks like The Firth of Fifth.  All of which is to say that I love these two records, similar perhaps to the Marcia Meyer instrumental folk compositions I so briefly posted once.

Both albums are very similar and there is no deterioration such as one often finds in compositional level from the first to the second.  They feature some relatively unique instruments as is obvious from the back scan.  The great flute performance on Namaste from the first:






Title track of the second record:






Notice that Jim Palmer is responsible for most of the composition.  Imagine humanity creating the most perfect music for the emotional and intellectual education of the brain-- this would be it for me.