HIGH CONTRAST

Post-Progressive, Post-Fusion At Its Best..! GAMALON in 1991 was five very talented individuals borne of the prog-rock and jazz fusion age. "High Contrast" is post-progressive, post-fusion high energy music at its best. The songs are very listenable and the playing is unmatched. GAMALON cooks. The finest music ever to come out of Western New York.

I have recently been buring my CD collection to my computer and am lamenting several missing Gamalon CDs that I loaned to a guitarist during a stint with a band. I still have a copy of this one though. Besides a couple tracks which include vocals (unusual for this band, and rare to see them do live), this album is a bit more polished than the first 3 and includes studio work with their violinist. I miss this music, and even more so, seeing the band live. I saw them more than 10 times over 3 years, and they were always amazing. This is one of the best overall listens if you are new to the band, but all of their disks are well worth owning. The live album is good as well, but sadly is missing the work of George Puleo. so it desrves a note of caution if you like the stidio versions and are expecting to hear them reproduced as original recorded.

Third album of the band from 1991 named High contrast is at same level with previous one, but here we have some pieces with vocal arrangements, sung by Tom Reinhardt who handles aswell the bass. Again great album, same influences from Satriani and Dixie Dregs, but combined with unique and solid interpretation of the musicians, Gamalon manag to create another solid album in jazz rock field. From up beat moments with energic instrumental parts, to some more mellow ones, the band always shine in what they do. Some bluesy moments like on The War Within with vocals, show another side of the band, who succeded to show us that they are good not only in jazz rock realm but aswell in a more blues orientated jazz. As I said some pieces are with vocals, quite unusual for the band, almost 90% of their material is instrumental, are very good, pleasent and warm voice interluded great with the rest of the instruments. So, even both albums I reviewed are good, I can not say they are among my fav albums from this genre, are only pleasent and very enjoyble, I know albums more intristing and more brilliant, nevertheless a good band who is rather unnoticed here, no wonder because their albums are quite hard to find.4 stars again. No really better then predecesors, but a solid album.

This is another album of guitar heavy jazz rock fusion by Gamelon. On this one, they re-added second guitarist, George Puleo, and this adds quite a bit of power to the lineup. However, like the previous album, the songs, for the most part don't range very far from the arena rock side of fusion.

There are some high points. The guitar solos throughout are great. That alone would be a good reason to purchase this album. But the best song is You Still Have Time, which sounds remarkably like early Kansas, both in composition and performance. That effect is helped along by Kansas-like vocals, and Geoffrey Fitzhugh Perry's violin. Another nice song is Flyby which features some impressive chapman stick work by drummer Ted Reinhardt.

Like their other albums, this is not bad, but it could be much better.