GAA - Auf der Bahn Zum Uranus
For Expose magazine, I did an article on the Garden of Delights label a while back that covered the first twenty or thirty of their releases at the time, including some unreleased music by this German group GAA, that turned out to be one of the worst things I’d ever heard. So I wasn’t exactly thrilled to go back and revisit the band’s original album. GAA are somewhat typical of a number of groups that got their inspiration from the beat and pop of the 60s, while attempting to transfer to a more progressive or psychedelic mode, and actually sound like a mix of both, meaning you’ll get some rather decent underground German psychy guitar stuff, but mixed with some really bad faux 60s pop pieces as if they combined some of those early Who albums with German Oak. It all ends up being barely mentionable, and very 8ish overall, that high mostly because I tend to like the guitary stuff by style.
Iconoclasta - Adolescencia Cronica
In the early 90s, the reissue of the first two Iconoclasta albums on Art Sublime was well talked about and deservedly so, so it’s strange that they seem to have fallen off of most maps by now, but that may be more an indication of the decline of the band than their essential early work. At the time Iconoclasta were a fairly original symphonic progressive, charmingly naive in terms of talent and instrumental tone, but audacious enough to create a few truly excellent releases that weren’t instantly comparable to anyone else. Adolescencia Cronica may have been the first album released after this initial peak period (although I’ve never been particularly fond of the EP Suite Mexicana), the first one that feels like something magical has left the building and I’m never quite sure what it is. It may be the production as Iconoclasta sound even thinner tonally than they did on their first three albums. The whispy thin tones on all the instruments prevent it from having much of an impact, especially with music as intricate and involved as Iconoclasta’s and as I type this, I’m thinking the music is less symphonic and structurally a little closer to fusion, something that would bear out even more over later albums. I’ve listened to this at times in the past and thought it quite good, but the last couple have made me feel this is a 9 in just about every way. Maybe they’ll do a Banco and rerecord some of these mid period albums some day. I’d love to hear some of this stuff with better production values.
Epidermis - Genius of Original Force
Lots of albums are touted out as being derivative of one band, but few deserve it more than this Epidermis album, a clone of Gentle Giant if there every was one. In fact this got tremendous hype when I was first looking into rarer prog stuff, but it’s an album that just doesn’t hold up, an opinion I have possibly because I tend to consider most of the original GG canon as very patchy from album to album. But Genius doesn’t even really have a lot of good spots and there’s a feeling the musicians weened themselves on GG rather than their influences and thus a lot of swing and eclecticism seems absent. About the only parts of interest is the strange concept and weird titles, often sung in Gentle Giant-like harmonies and styles.