OBRAS DE VIOLETA PARRA

Here we have a nice record. as many people pointed out this album is sort of a tribute to the works of Violeta Parra, using her music as a base to insert a progressive feel and create something unique of theirs and at the same time paying their respect to the composer. I should note that I not familiar with the "source" material of the album and I will try to review the work only by what is stated by it.

And what I must mention about this work? Well is pretty good, the songs are in majority large and epic compositions with long instrumental sections. I believe that the general sounding of the album can be split into 2 focal points, at one side you have the "folk" aspect of the band, which I must say is a VERY strong trait and can be a downside to some people, but once you get yourself comfortable with it will perceive this is very nicely done.

On the other side is the prog-rock, which is more oriented to classic prog, with piano and guitar solos and all that stuff (think in early progressive common records).

I know that normally these two aspects will be in every "prog-folk" band, but here I feel we are in front of a more Folk then Prog album, in opposition of other bands of the sub-genre like Jethro Tull, which is mostly a Hard Rock band with some elements of Folk.

Anyway, both the two aspects of the band are used in a very solid way, some pieces are more oriented to one or other side but most of the time is a nice mixture of the two. For example the album opener "Arauco Tiene una Pena" starts full progressive until the middle where the claps starts and the song become folk-oriented. "El Guillatún", the follow-up is almost entirely folk. In the middle of the album, we have "Un rio de sangre", most oriented to progressive and experimentation.

The musicians here show that are good songwriters most of the time and can compose tracks with variations but maintaining the overall idea, most of the time...

One of the problems that I have had with this record is duration, it has 77 minutes and I feel very tired after the middle of it, even if they had plenty of material I think is very hard to maintain a work of this extension consistent, something that the band fails in my opinion.

This could be easily fixed by removing songs or at least reducing the duration of some. "Rio de sangre" have 13 minutes with only instruments, and become very tiring near the end, some tracks after some time start to sound repetitive and made me feel the desire to skip it.

In summary, I considerer this to be a great record that could have been a legendary one with some simplification, it is still, something that you should listen to if want to dig more into prog-folk and hear something that truly makes use of the traditional music of his origin country. 4 Stars