THE ASSEMBLAGE POINT

This is a band from Russia which plays mainly Jazz-Rock / Fusion music. In this, their first album, the band is a quintet which consists of Michail Levanov (saxophone ), Alexander Vasilyev (guitar ), Oscar Chuntosov (keyboards), Alex Ryslavsky (bass ) and Peter Ivshin (drums). They are very good musicians which sound like being trained musicians in some formal music schools.

Track by track:

"Kebab": a musical piece with some "Arabian" melodies.

"Princetrane": a Jazz-Rock Fusion musical piece with some Funky music rhythms and an electric piano which sounds like a Fender Rhodes, very much like the mid to late seventies piano sounds that some artists of that time used (Jean- Luc Ponty, Bob James, Jeff Beck, Weather Report), plus some sax and guitar solos.

"1980 Summer Olympics": another Jazz-Rock Fusion musical piece with again some seventies music influences. It includes a brief drums and percussion solo.

"Prelude In C Minor": a musical piece with sax melodies, a synthesizer, and with the contrast of some "quiet" and heavy parts, with a very good piano solo. It is one of the best musical pieces in this album for my taste.

"Merry Elephants": another musical piece with some Funky music influences from the seventies, with organ, sax and guitar solos.

"The Assemblage Point": It starts and ends with an LP scratch sound effect, like being played in a vinyl album! It stars with a sax solo with some drums playing. Then, the full band plays the song with some changes in the rhythm, and again with a Fender Rhodes's solo and a guitar solo. The influences from the Jazz-Rock /Fusion music of the seventies are again very clear in this song.

This is a very good album from this band, very melodic, very well recorded and mixed. It receives a four stars rating from me.