BANDA ELÁSTICA

I'm admittedly no fan of, let alone an expert for RIO or Avant-Prog but this album here contains exactly the right food for my ears which are used to a wide range of sounds I can say despite all humility. The spare sources in the net with informations about this exceptional Mexican band and their biography here are saying that their music has similarities to the one of HENRY COW. I tried to enjoy already as well H.C. some time ago but found them quite hard to digest compared to B.E. I've to say. They might have been used as a reference since they were one of the few bands that were using wind instruments in such kind of jazz-fusion/RIO blend. Anyway in a sub-genre like RIO/Avant-Prog gathering bands whose main features are uniqueness and polarisation it's supposed to be quite difficult to draw any comparisons. Of course enjoyment of music and taste preference always has to be a very personal thing and thus perception of a certain kind of music can differ a lot between people. So if anyone would ask me how B.E. sounds alike and which band they could be compared with I frankly could not tell any. I just can speak for myself in saying that usually I'm not a great fan of extreme oddity and dissonance but I recently started to enjoy more and more unique and adventurous artists like FRENCH TV, TAAL or HÖYRY-KONE. This doesn't mean that B.E. is sounding similar to any of them but all of those bands might have in common that their music was able to appeal to me right from the very first listen which is not really a typical feature for that sub-genre.

So let me try to describe how B.E.'s music sounds here on this masterly record. In some way it's a perfect blend of jazz fusion, chamber rock and ethnic influences with some odd RIO/Avant elements added in a good measure. This album is able to hold my attention right from the first note until its very end without becoming enervating or indigestive at any moment which doesn't happen very often to me actually. This fact alone is already a very good reason for me to rate it with the full score. Second striking evidence is the incredible broad range of instruments they are using, starting from typical folk-type ones like acoustic guitar, percussion, marimbas or flute, over jazz-type ones like sax, clarinet, contrabass up to synthesizer sounds adding sometimes even a kind of alien and out-of-space atmosphere with strange tunes that resemble tortured cats or something like that. Strangest but still fully enjoyable track might be "Cine Negro" revealing lots of experimental sounds but as well wonderful flute play. Most of the others could be described as some adventurous Spanish/Latin American flavoured jazz-fusion. "Alto a la Caceria" shows the highest proportion of synthesizer keyboards and might be the least experimental one apart from the last one, which is plain Latin Jazz.

For sure B.E.'s second album is an exceptional and highly versatile one that should appeal to anyone preferring music that is different from anything else and fully enjoyable at the same time. Highly recommended and fully deserved 5 stars!

I also want to say that for me this isn`t their best album, at least i prefer other 2 more than this, so this is just a caution or introduction about this album and this review .

First of all (and the less important thing) i have to say that the cover art is awful, something like clows playing music and also the titles and colours are horrible; well if you dont know, Banda Elastica is a band which dont use vocals, only instrumental.

"Tambora" this album start with that song which is something like an introduction, less than a minute, you maybe will imagine like if you are in a circus or something like that. Next to it you will find a pack of 6 short songs called "Micropiezas", which in english means Little Pieces, all of them have it`s own name, but all toghether form only one song, nothing new, nothign to get excited of proud of, so many short songs the most of them are less than 1 minute. "Suite Regresiva" is an excellent song, for sure one of the best songs here, where you can appreciate the quality of the sound and musicianship, a thing that i enjoy a lot is the use of percussion, it gives ita nice and better sound , this song is divided in 4 pieces, and it`s the largest song in the album, also you will appreciate how they "play" with time signatures.

"Presentacion" (introduction) as the title say is another mid intro, horrible IMO becaus is only the sound of a host introducing something or someone. "Galeria de Pelafustanes" is the part of tha album that i enjoy the most, it is another pack of 3 songs with names of people, i like them a lot, elegant songs, with an exquisite guitar sound, and a superb sax dirung the songs, each one has a lenght of 3 minutes aprox, but very nice.

"Insomnio" is another great song, with a bit changes in the time and tempo, but nothing new to show us. I wont review the last songs, and maybe you`ll say im too lazy, but honestly all of them are quite similar, so i think i have nothing more to contribute to this review. You will find some influence of Univers Zero (not because of the dark sound) and maybe Gong.

As i said above, this is not my favorite Banda Elastica`s album, and i dont like it so so much, anyway i dont think it`s a bad album, so i recommend it only to people who already know the band, or who only wish to dig them more.

For me 3 stars, good but non-essential.