Guitarist Gary Boyle

Of course he was the guitarist for Isotope, but then he subsequently made three wonderful fusion albums in the late seventies, with the first (obviously?) being the best. I was curious to know if he subsequently produced more great music, like Akkerman did for example, but the only gem turned out to be his Triple Echo album released in 1994 or thirty years ago now. That one has some truly lovely compositional and reflective moments in addition to the nice fusion.

From discogs:

British guitarist and vocalist, born 24 November 1941, Patna, Bihar, India.

He came to England when he was 8. In the 70s Boyle was member of cult jazz-rock band Isotope (three albums for Gull).

Specifically from Triple Echo, the beautiful Peacegreen:

From Games which is more recent, hailing from 2003, the track called LP:

Hopefully everyone is already quite familiar with the first 3 but if you're lucky enough to have never heard them, you're in for a nice treat.

Des Laszlo's Fal Mogott: A lost masterpiece from 1984

 

From discogs, the possibly gratuitous or perhaps tongue in cheek (Eastern European humour?) descriptor:

Profile: Hungarian composer and saxophone player. Successful jazz musician.

Born January 9, 1954 in Budapest.

He was involved in multiple other projects which are spread out among different entries (eg Dimenzio, posted earlier here). Mention should also be made of 1978's Tomsits Jazz Group with its Escher cover, which is pure genius.

The title track beings relatively inauspiciously with A minor going down to F repeatedly but I love how the guitarist (who is this guy) develops the melody and the song changes throughout. 

Closing track Aura demonstrates quite convincingly his composer's talent or perhaps genius:

Really a wonderful, lovely lost album. Worth hearing a hundred times over.

Lesek Semelka, SLS in 1985's Coloured Dreams

 

This gentleman was in Bohemia (just posted recently with bonus).  

His 1985 release though is quite different, with a commercial slant and very little creative direction or progressiveness, despite the discogs descriptor.  Which you can't blame him for, given the year of 1985. I supposed SLS is the artist's group named for himself.  From my amphibian proggy point of view the best track is the title track which is the last track:

Nonetheless, here and there some tracks well worth hearing.

Bonus tracks from Bohemia, limited time only

 

Their stuff was posted on this blog long ago back here, and I thought I collected everything from them but I was sadly wrong. Or until this day, happily wrong.

From the text document: Bohemia – Singly A Rozhlasové Nahrávky 1976-1978

Label: Tomáš Padevět – 8594189130174

Format: 2 x CD, Compilation

Country: Czech Republic

Released: 2023

Genre: Rock, Blues

Style: Blues Rock

There's such a nice mix of early protoprog, horn rock, and some fusion in here, all of it well worth the hearing for sure, roughly half vocal and half instrumental I think. Among the vocal tracks, Kam Jdou:

While a track called Mlhave rano with its flute plus electric guitar intro so typical of that prog period moves into the wonderful dissonant arpeggios that bring it into the fusion sound, very much electric guitar based (like the German band Alcatraz in their 3-4 period), which is so nice to hear:

Unknown Portuguese band Arte e Oficio: Faces, Danza

 

Here's a wonderful surprise that really blew me away, after everything we've already heard up to now.

Information is sparse here on discogs. They are from Portugal.

Reminds me a lot of my old favourite Julien B's First Snow. Because it's a gorgeous mix of uptempo rockers, funky stuff, and progressively-minded songwriting. It also recalls Italian prog-songsters Libra, who made 3 wonderful albums mixing creative songs with fusion and progressive Italians, or more distantly, the old favourite Memo's Captain Thunder.  The singer in particular recalls the singer from Libra.  Anyways you get the idea.

The wonderfully titled prog song Lobster Society:

Album closes out with just a brilliant vocal composition that never ceases to entrance and amaze me because of the originality of both melody and chord changes, called Finally:

Notice the gorgeous sax pattern when he mentions hearing the sax, and how well the singer utilizes his vibrato at the right high notes.

Note that in the follow up album from 1981 called Danza they moved straightforwardly into the simple rock direction, basically like a toned down Rolling Stones you could say, lacking the creative progressive dimension and with a lot of imitation rockabilly and blues rockers. Can't really blame them for that though. At least--praise be to God--the 80s new wave digital jumpy synths do not make an unwelcome appearance.  Note that there is an alternative version of this album with bonus tracks presumably lifted from their singles, which is of interest, although what I have is low bitrate. As well note that in 2014 they recorded a live album of their old tracks. That one I'd like to purchase if it doesn't show up anywhere, for sure worth a listen on strength of the Faces compositions.

So most of that album is quite ordinary and tossable, but the title track is nice and approaches the prior debut album's level of interest:

Note from the bonus tracks, the one called O Carcajero de Galinha which appeared on this 45:

A basic electric guitar riff transcends into some lovely synth-draped fusion chords that keep modulating unexpectedly-- a wonderful surprise given that the title would lead one to expect totally generic Brazilianly ordinary latin garbage samba which I despise-- though not quite as much as billionaire, soon to be richest person in the world, Taylor Swift.

This music is hugely underrated, like Julien B's First Snow or my old classic rock favourite Ambush, and I find it quite tragic. Perhaps in their native Portugal it's different?